Nashville Market (and a giveaway winner)

Hello everyone! Sorry it took me so long to make this post.  Life was busy when we returned from Nashville, and now I've caught some nasty cold thing.  I have almost no energy, which is no fun at all!

We ended up leaving a day early for Nashville, thanks to the snowstorm barreling into North Carolina just before our original departure date.  So instead of being snowed/iced in in Greensboro, we had a stressful hour or two of snowy driving just west of Asheville, and then all was good.  Flash forward past some room mixups at the Embassy Suites, and you would have found us all set up for my first official Nashville Market as a designer!  Here's a peek at a bit of our room:

We tried to add a lot of flowers and light colors to make the room bright and cheery, and I really think we succeeded.  The show went well, I think, and I made several new friends on the trip.  Since we were in town so early, we found enough spare time to hit one of several antiques shows going on that weekend.  This one was at the state fairgrounds, and was called the Tailgate Music Valley Antiques Show.  Boy did we do a lot of walking around!  Our purchases included a new antique sampler for me, and two new antique samplers for Mom.  I don't have a picture to share with you right now, mostly because I just don't have the energy to get a proper photo at the moment.  I will try to share before too long.  We also ran into a few other designers who were taking advantage of some free time to do a little shopping.  I don't think it's really my place to say who I saw buying what, but there are some fabulous reproductions bound to show up out there in the next year or so!  I also picked up another treasure for myself from an antiques dealer at the Nashville market itself.  Again, I haven't the energy to take a picture of my new baby just yet, but I promise I will share in the future.  Suffice it to say that I was showing my new treasures off all weekend long.  I can't wait to put needle to linen and breathe some new life into these precious pieces!

I have some photos of Mom's new releases that I want to share with all of you, but my energy is already fading.  Bleg.  So I will get down to what you are probably really interested in (a winner) and save the rest for another post.  Numbering each post and then using a random number generator to choose the winner, and....





The winner is Cath of "The Stitching Chicken."  Congratulations!!!!!  Please email me at robin@threadsofmemory.com with your address and your choices of patterns.

That's it for today.  I'm headed to the couch for a nap.  More updates soon (I hope).

Introducing Harriet Hodges

Hello world!  I will have to make this a quick one, as the winter weather is throwing a major wrench into our Nashville preparations.  Here is the last pattern that I will have available this month, Miss Harriet Hodges:

I feel a bit like this photo doesn't do her justice, but it's the best I can do.  Harriet stitched her sampler on a very fine linen using silk threads.  I have used 40 count Beige linen from Weeks Dye Works for my reproduction, and it is stitched using NPI silks.  It was quite a challenge to chart and stitch, because Harriet's cross stitches weren't always two threads high and two threads wide... not something easy to show on a chart in so many colors!  I have done my best to be faithful to the appearance of the original sampler though.

There's just a little more time left to enter my giveaway, which can be found here.  There are not a lot of people entered, so you have a fabulous chance of winning!

The original plan was for three of us, Mom, me, and our friend Chris, to leave bright and early Thursday morning for Nashville.  We would arrive just after 5 that evening, giving us plenty of time to set up our room and even do a little sightseeing on Friday before the market gets going.  Our first bump in the road came when poor Chris came down with the flu.  She will be greatly missed on this trip!  Then there's the weather.  Not only do we have to make it over a mountain range to get into Tennessee, but now they are predicting that this could be a major ice event here in middle North Carolina.  So what do you do?  Do you wait and hope that you could travel safely a day later?  Do you leave early?  How early?  And that's where we are right now.  I think we're going to live before the sun comes up tomorrow and hope that we can get through the mountains before it even begins to snow.  But we're watching the weather closely all evening, as we scramble to pack and get all those last minute details ironed out.  Hopefully, I will be updating early next week with a happy little report of safe travels and lots of sales.  Hopefully.

Stay out there my friends!

Two more new releases

Good morning all!  Hope you all had a pleasant weekend.  I'd ask if any of you enjoyed the game yesterday, but it was a real snoozer for those of us who aren't die hard fans of one of the two teams involved.

Anyways, I'm hard at work assembling patterns here.  The cats are supervising, but I don't let them get too close, or else I'd have sheets of paper and plastic bags skittering everywhere!  I wanted to share my other two original designs with you this morning.  First up we have Springtime on Hodge Hill, which was inspired by my love of designs with houses on them, and by the flowers on the Harriet Hodges antique (repro to be shared later this week).

This design is stitched on 35 count Linen line by Weeks Dye works using overdyed cottons from Weeks Dye Works and Gentle Arts.  It's another small design, and stitches up pretty quickly.

And finally this morning we have Yield Not.  After charting my reproduction sampler with the Adam and Eve on it, I decided I wanted a smaller Adam and Eve piece, and this design is the result.  It is stitched on 40 count Vintage Exemplar Linen from Lakeside Linens using overdyed cotton threads from Weeks Dye Works and Gentle Arts.

If you like what you see here, please let your local needlework shop know about these designs.  And please share about these patterns with your friends too!  I can be reached for wholesale orders at robin@threadsofmemory.com, or you can contact my mother at Cherished Stitches.

Don't forget to enter my giveaway, which can be found in this post.  Til next time, stay warm, and I hope you have plenty of time to be creative!

Friendship and Family

Good morning everyone!  I'm sitting here in chilly North Carolina, waiting for two snow bands, one from the east and one from the west, to converge over the region and drop a few inches of snow on us.  It's kind of exciting, since I haven't seen any accumulation of snow in several years!

Meanwhile, I have two more patterns to share with you.  These patterns were inspired by the antique samplers that I own.  They are very small, quick pieces to stitch.  Here is "Family":

And here is "Friendship":

Both designs are stitched on 36 count Weeks Cocoa linen.  Friendship is stitched entirely with Weeks overdyed cottons, and Family is stitched with a mix of Weeks and Gentle Arts Shaker Threads.

If you like what you see, and you would like to purchase a pattern, please let your LNS know about your interest in my designs!  And please, share your interest with the rest of your stitching friends too.  Shops can contact me regarding purchase at robin@threadsofmemory.com.  Or they can stop by the Cherished Stitches room at Nashville.  My mom will be carrying all of the patterns that I am sharing here on my blog.

Don't forget about entering my giveaway.  You can read about it on this post here.

Til next time, stay safe and warm, and stay crafty!

Introducing Rachel Mauger

A few years ago, I shared a not-so-great picture on this blog of an antique sampler I had acquired featuring a sitting stag.  I started charting and stitching on a reproduction not too long after that, but set it aside for other stitching interests (and because charting the deer was a daunting prospect).  Over the last few months, I have been able to devote some serious stitching and charting time to Rachel's sampler, and here she is:

The model is stitched on 40 count Cappuccino linen by Weeks Dye Works, using silks from NPI, Au ver a Soie, and Crescent Colours (now Classic Colorworks).  I was first attracted to this sampler by the deer, and by the extremely bright turquoise and pinks that Rachel chose for her border.  The colors are all very bright, but I think they work well together.  I hope a few of you will think so as well.

Rachel stitched her sampler using wool threads on a coarse 22-count canvas.  I chose to stitch my model on a much higher count linen simply because that is more to my personal tastes, but it could certainly be stitched on a fabric closer in size to the original thread count.  I considered stitching with wools, but I simply could not find that pink and turquoise in the materials available today.

I went online to do a little digging around and to see if I could get some idea of who Rachel might have been.  The sampler was purchased from a store in England and I discovered that there were several women named Rachel Mauger living on the island of Guernsey in the English Channel.  There are records of two young women who would have been of the appropriate age to have stitched this sampler.  So maybe Rachel came from Guernsey, but I don't suppose we will ever know for certain.

If you like this reproduction, and you would like to purchase a pattern, please let your LNS know about your interest.  And please, share your interest with the rest of your stitching friends too.   Shops can contact me regarding purchasing at robin@threadsofmemory.com.  Or, they can stop by the Cherished Stitches room at Nashville.  My mom will be carrying all of the patterns that I will be sharing here on my blog.

I am off to put a few more stitches in one of Mom's models.  Til next time, stay crafty my friends!

It's time for a giveaway!!!

Hello everyone!  As this post's title says, it is time for me to have a giveaway.  Everybody loves a chance to win free stuff, right?

The rules:
1-  You MUST be a follower of this blog.
2-  Leave a comment on this post, and you get one entry.
3-  Share about my giveaway on your own blog.  Then come back here and leave a comment on this post, telling me that you've shared, and you get a second entry.
4-  The contest will close at midnight on February 12th.  I will try to announce the winner as soon after that as possible, but I might not get the chance until after Market is over and I return home.

The Prize:
The winner will get their choice of two of my new patterns.  I will be sharing all six new releases over the next three weeks.

Well, that's it for this post.  Coming soon: photos of the Rachel Mauger Reproduction Sampler.

New Year's start and the first trip of the year

Wow!  Has it really been almost 3 weeks since I last posted?  Where does the time go!  I guess I will start by sharing some stitching progress.  Like many of my fellow stitchers, I like to start on a brand new project on January 1st, as a sort of New Year's celebration.  This year, I chose to work on "Heaven and Nature Sing" by With Thy Needle and Thread.  The following picture shows one day's worth of stitching, and only one day's worth of stitching, since I haven't had time to work on the piece since the 1st.  Not too bad for one day's work, I think:

Since the first, I've been devoting my stitching time to a model piece for Mom, which I can't share yet, of course.  There actually hasn't been all that much time for stitching though.  Among other things, Alton and I spent a week in California cleaning out his uncle's condo in order to make some progress on his estate (Alton is the executor).  It was hard work, and sad work too.  I won't bore you with the details, but I will say that it truly boggled my mind to see how many different documents used to be generated containing a person's social security number: bank statements, pay stubs, loan documents, etc, etc.  Shred, shred, shred.

While we were in California, we did take a few hours off to do a tiny bit of sight seeing.   Between Los Angeles and San Diego, there is a old Spanish Mission at the town of San Juan Capistrano.  The original church was destroyed by an earthquake in the 19th century, and the ruins of "The Great Stone Church" still stand on the site today:

The church is listed on the World Monuments Fund top 100 Most Endangered Sites because of its fragile state.  The whole mission was simply beautiful, and relaxing.

The mission is also famous for its annual "Return of the Swallows" which is celebrated every year on March 19.  Apparently, the birds return on almost the same day every year, and build their nests along the eaves of the mission's buildings.  Sadly, it was the wrong time of the year for us to see the swallows ourselves.

There were some beautiful cactus plantings around the mission.  I didn't take many photos of the gardens, so you'll just have to take my word that they were lovely.

 So that's most of what I've been up to this month.  I have two of my six patterns bagged up, and I'm working hard at getting all the others ready.  I can't believe it's less than a month til the Nashville show!

Tomorrow (assuming that we still have power), I will post a giveaway announcement, and I will start sharing photos of my designs.  I hope some of you will like them!  Til next time, stay warm, stay safe, and stay crafty!