Shabby Chic Sampler CQ

Plan M pinned to the design wall! I am feeling pretty confident I am going with this arrangement.



Because I loosened up the arrangement I was able to add some old linens into the mix that I couldn't add before so that opened up a design possibility I had been trying to figure out. In samplers you often see a variety of flowers and vines growing out of a pot or basket. One of the dresser scarves I had did have a basket so I am going to continue the flowers over the surface of the quilt and their origin will be the basket. It was a bit of a breakthrough because now I have my surface design source. Instead of embroidering the individual seams on the blocks, I will be trailing this long vine everywhere and adding fantasy flowers to it. I think it will be a fun way to have flowers blooming everywhere & free me up from individual seam treatments!


These gingham flowers are just pinned for effect. Behind them I intend to have 3 dominate jacobean flowers embroidered.

A variety of linens and embroidery-my idea is to group various pieces near a bunch of roses at the corners. While I wasn't thrilled with the symmetrical arrangement this piece presented, there wasn't much I could do to avoid it (believe me, I tried) so yesterday I just decided to give in and go with it. My concession is that the corner treatments can be just different enough to be interesting. The middle samplers, while similiar, will be just a little different too. It's the nature of the beast, I guess. The background will be the pieces of the linens I have collected.

Overall, I am very pleased with this new arrangement. Today I'll work to get the linens pieced together so I can start adding the surface machine embroidery and then the handwork. What a relief!