Recently someone was sweet enough to send me a picture of their finished A Patriot's Sampler, and it put me in quite a patriotic mood when I saw it! I suddenly wanted to decorate my whole house in the colors of the flag. 🙂

This is Patti's finished sampler, on which she used antique ticking and vintage ricrac:

And this is what she had to say about it:

"Here in Chicago the veterans in the VA hospitals make the poppies. Then Memorial Day weekend, the American Legion veterans collect donations on the street corners and hand out the poppies. Everyone puts them on their lapels, purses, car rearview mirrors, etc. I just stitched one on to the pillow and left the little tag that says 'In Memoriam Made by Veterans in Hospitals.' I thought it appropriate. :)"

You may remember that this was a free chart I offered last year for Memorial Day, and if you'd like to stitch it, just look for it under the "Freebie" category in the sidebar.

Btw, Patti's blog is lovely! It's called  Winding Vine Wanderings, and she has many beautiful finishes she's shared.

Thank you so much, Patti, for sharing your lovely sampler with me. 🙂

Dutch Beauty has returned to me, and I am incredibly happy with her. When I crawled into bed last night, I sat for quite a while just looking up at it and marveling that such a young girl (by today's standards) would have stitched something so astounding. Was it expected of her to do so? Did she start out with the intentions of creating something this large, or did she simply have trouble finding a stopping point? Could she not settle on just one pattern, but wanted to incorporate many? (Yes, they had cross stitch patterns back then!) I'm sure if she knew I copied her masterpiece, she would laugh and say, "Oh, that old thing?" 😉

The barrel distortion of my lens made the frame look bowed in the above photo, but in real life it is not! Thank you, Julie, at Reflections Framing and Stitching for choosing such a gorgeous moulding for it! (Maryann and Julie and Connie are all such sweet ladies. and I'm thrilled that we once again have a lovely cross stitch shop here.)

This sampler is a mirrored pattern, which made the work a bit tedious at times. But in the end, it was worth all of the exasperated sighs and exclamations of, "This again?"

Believe it or not, my bed is king-sized. The way everything fits so snugly into the photo gives it the appearance of being much smaller than it is, but trust me, it's pretty overwhelming when I walk into my bedroom!

I cannot believe it's finished! And now I want to stitch my guts out. 🙂

And guess what else I got back this week! 

Thank you to Jill Rensel for such a lovely job on my (The Primitive Needle) A&E! I loved the original color scheme Lisa designed it in, and when I saw the way Shepherd's Bush had changed the colors, I couldn't believe it was the same sampler! Tina and Teri did a beautiful conversion to their signature soft palette, and as much as I wanted to use it, I knew that it wouldn't quite fit in with this particular wall of color. So I opted for keeping the majority of the primitive colors Lisa used, while switching out a few to more vibrant hues in an effort to keep up with the other Edens. (To the left is Frances Eden, and underneath is Paradise Lost.)(Would you believe that it just now occurred to me that Frances Eden's last name is Eden? Am I the only one who didn't notice the coincidence?)

I'm off to do a little weeding (Mom, quit snickering… okay, a lot of weeding!), and then perhaps take a walk around the lake. But when I get back, I do believe I'll stitch until I can stand it no more. 🙂