IHSW and a Joyous Minuet for Elizabeth Burrows

IHSW hosted by Joysze of Random Ramblings

The idea being to spend as much time as possible during the third full weekend of each month on your favourite pursuit - stitching!

This weekend I got LOADS done.  We all either have colds or are recovering from colds so from Friday until Sunday we hermitted together.  Apart from hubby who had a job on and had to keep us in wood for the burner.

On Friday I stitched my piece for the Hallowe'en Ornie SAL blog, this month it's Vampires.  When I chose the topic for February I had this piece in mind so I was a little surprised when I pulled the magazine out to stitch her and realised she is supposed to be a witch!  Anyway, minus the broom and the dinky little hat plus some fangs she will look alot more vampy.

Brooke's Books from JCS Hallowe'en 2013

She's not really bald, I have left the black until last.  I also need to order some metallic black for her cloak.  And some beads, so that's biting into next month's Stitch from Stash budget.  Biting - get it? hahaha

On Saturday I stitched more of the Vampire and all of Day Four of the Spooky Countdown by Primitive Hare:

Cheery little block isn't it?

Sunday was dedicated to Day One from The Little Stitcher 12 Days of Christmas but I'm saving that for my themed TUSAL post.

And on to the Joyous Minuet for Elizabeth Burrows.  Elizabeth stitched this design in 1725 and the Minuet was a very popular dance at that time so I'm sure she would have skipped a measure or two when she finished her piece.  She was only 16 so I'm not sure if she would have allowed to attend dances, or maybe that was considered quite grown-up and time for a match to be found?  She is quite proud of her date of birth and includes it in the sampler along with the year of stitching.  An older unmarried woman may not have done this.  I read somewhere or other that many antique samplers have the date of birth unpicked so as not to give away the lady's age to any would-be suitors!!

Here's what I said when I started to stitch her back in January:

As most of you know I have been assisting Nicola with her Scarlet Letter Year Challenge.  The Challenge officially ends on 20th February 2014 but we will be continuing with the blogs and the stitching because it's such a great group of stitchers.  Anyway, there will be a Grand Prize Draw on the 20th for everyone who has completed a Scarlet Letter Sampler during the year.  So how embarrassing would it be if all I have to show is one large outlined band and a bit of blue? 

So when I won Elizabeth Burrows in the Advent Giveaways I knew I must try my best to stitch her!  The Scarlet Letter website says this about her "This small early eighteenth century English alphabet sampler is actually more challenging than it appears at first glance."

The 1725 on the frame refers to the date Elizabeth stitched her sampler, but this is the really exciting bit - in the bottom row it says 179, this is because Elizabeth also includes her year of birth 1709 but rather than use all four digits she uses 179 as that was how the year was pronounced then (Seventeen Nine, rather than Seventeen Oh Nine).  Now anyone who has my email address may recognise those numbers, they are my date of birth which I incorporated into my email addy!!  So it seems most serendipitous that this sampler chose to come to me to stitch her!  We are made for each other!

I used the 35 count linen that Nicola kindly provided me for this one and Janet Carsels.  The threads are three from Olde Willow Linen Threads which I won in a giveaway from Riona.  The fourth is a DMC.  I finished this one in plenty of time for the end of the blog, a whole two days early!!  The most challenging part was the counting over three for some of the bands.  You need to keep a good rhythm going for those.

Finally, World of Cross Stitching magazine are continuing their series entitled "Blogging Friends of Jo's" in this month's mag they feature Justine:

So why not pop over and say Hi to her!