Four Seasons Quaker

A week or so ago I said I'd post photos of an ongoing project - voila, here it is :)     Monasterium's Four Seasons Quaker is on my "upstairs" frame - so far I've completed the Spring section and a small part of the Summer section.  I'm using 3 Belle Soie silks and one skein of a Gloriana, on a Puritan Grey Legacy Linen in 34 count.  The colours are very different than those shown in the pattern's illustration - I've chosen to emphasize some of the unique colours that I associate with our Prairie seasons.  The Spring shade is Belle Soie's Shepherd's Pasture, a very very soft green that reminds me of those first whispered hints of the new season in the willows growing in the coulees and along the streams.  The Summer colour I've chosen is Gloriana's Baby Corn - not the bright yellow of the powerful summer suns and the canola and mustard crops,  but rather the ripening shades of the wheat and barley fields that stretch out to the horizon on the Alberta and Saskatchewan plains, and a reminder of the late summer tones of the native prairie grasses that sustained the buffalo and the antelope for so many centuries and that shelters the sage grouse,  prairie chicken, and teeming wildlife even today where the native grasslands are still preserved and thrive.

You can just see the tiny Autumn sample on the bottom rod, where I tried out the colour to see if it was going to work - I've done the  same with the Winter colour too, but it doesn't show in this photograph.  So stay tuned for progress reports, I'm enjoying stitching this immensely, but have one or two other pieces on the go at the same time - I like having a little variety!

Beatrix Potter Quaker Sampler

Through a presentation at one of my first Sampler Guild meetings, I became intrigued with the Quaker samplers stitched by students at the Ackworth School in Yorkshire and other similar schools.  The motifs are simple but infinitely varied, and the designs allow for a wide range of colour choices.  When Jacqueline Holdsworth of Needleprint published the chart for the Beatrix Potter Quaker Sampler, a sampler likely stitched by a Quaker schoolgirl, that had hung on the wall of Beatrix Potter's Lake District farmhouse, I knew it was one that I'd have to stitch, and all the more so after I'd seen it finished by several of our Guild members.

Before I could purchase the sampler pattern, it went out of print, but Jacqueline eventually made it available for purchase as a digital download and I was able to add it to my folder of "projects yet to come".   (You can still purchase it here.)

So finally in 2009 I started to stitch it in honour of our 40th wedding anniversary, and just yesterday I picked it up from my exceptionally talented local framer.  I'm so very pleased with the finishing she did and the frame we chose.    The fabric is an Edinburgh antique white linen and it's stitched with Amy Mitten's Fibers to Dye For silks in Madam Rose and Point Blank.  I've personalized several of the motifs to mark our anniversary,and I'll include additional information on the back of the frame about the design.

Definitely a keeper, don't you think?