Mary went back to school!

On Saturday, and today, I danced the biggest Happy Dance of the year so far. Why?

Well, on Saturday we travelled over to Doncaster for a model railway exhibition at Doncaster racecourse. We had booked an overnight stay at the Holiday Inn and it was there that I put the final stitches in to Mary Wigham (Happy Dance Number 1). Now Doncaster is not that far away from Ackworth and the Ackworth School were Mary Wigham was a pupil. So, on Sunday morning we went there.


Mary was then put away until today when I finished her. As mentioned in a previous post I had made a serious error when positioning this piece on the fabric. After seeing some work finished by hemstitching on Carol R's blog I decided that I was going to finish Mary in this way. Carol kindly emailed me the instructions. She is, however, in the process of producing a tutorial on this subject. I had just enough material to sew it. This was my first ever attempt at hemstitching. It took me about an hour to set the work up, putting the threads etc and over an hour to stitch each of the sides, hence Happy Dance Number 2. Here she is finished.


For the record this was stitched on 32ct Lambswool linen using Caron Wildflowers, Blueberry. For the finishing I used Gutermann thread, colour 169, a perfect match.

I have had really mixed feeling about this piece. I'm glad that I have been a part of this worldwide SAL and that it has raised a lot of money to preserve the real Mary Wigham sampler but will I be doing another Quaker this big in future, probably not. Although I have enjoyed stitching it, I have not looked forward to the stitching day on the rotation. Don't ask me why because I cannot put my finger on it.

So what else have I done this week? From Doncaster we moved on to stay with friends for a few days. Here I was able to finish the stitching on Scaredy Sheep from Shepherd's Bush. Here is the front.


Here is the back.


I also made progress on the Hootzi Humbug.


I hope everyone has a great weekend.