I had DD the elder draw our new horse on some fabric, and then I did some thread painting to fill in. As usual, I forgot to take a photo of just the drawing, but from this you can see it was good, and any issues with the finished product are because of my stitching skills.
So this is where the measure twice part comes in. My EGA chapter had a class with Pamela Darney (see here for the class write up and below for my work on the sampler) and she gave us graph paper and alphabets and told us to be sure and graph our names before adding them to the sampler. We discussed changing size of letters and space in between and abbreviations and such, and we all went away with a firm resolve to count things out. Well, when I went to do the name on linen for the back of the ornament, I didn't bother to check the linen count or the number of stitches. So of course things were too big for the square form I was using for the ornament, not once, but twice! I did finally get it right though.
And here is the finished ornament, with Jasmine in all her gray paint horse glory.
As for the Pamela Darney sampler, here is my start (and her web site).
I really had a good time in the class, and I must admit to being in love with Quaker sampler motifs now. I haven't done much sampler work recently but I did quite a few reproductions over 20 years ago and haven't really gone back. I've always admired the Quaker samplers and smalls done by my EGA chapter members, but have somehow resisted doing to much until now. But after devouring a table of Pamela's samplers, I must do some more. And after dealing with the coif on a very large frame, a bit of linen in hand is really relaxing!
