Saturday, September 6, 2008

I Have a Plan!

First of all, "hello" to everyone! I'm Teri, and I'm a needlework enthusiast. I've been stitching since I was in grade school. And I started cross stitching in the early 1980s. I "discovered" blogs about a year and a half ago, and I'm so glad I did. I've never joined a stitch along, an exchange, or an online group...until now. When I saw what Vonna had planned, though, I couldn't resist! And, like many of you, I've lost a lot of sleep over the past week thinking about all the possibilities. I spent last weekend going through all my cross stitch charts. Should I go with a favorite designer? A theme? A season? All my favorite odds and ends? After thinking about all the possibilities and following along with your ideas, I've come up with the following plan.

My neighborhood is going to draw from homes, people, animals, borders, verses, and motifs from historical samplers. I love the idea of this project being a history lesson, so I plan to learn a lot as I construct my own historical neighborhood. I pulled the following charts from my stash.

My next step is to figure out what elements I want to use and how they will all fit together. One of the things that intimidates me about the neighborhoods I've seen is scale. I'm worried about the size of everything being "off." So I figured with historical samplers it wouldn't matter! Don't be surprised then when you see a person larger than one of the houses! I definitely like symmetry is design, but I'm thinking this neighborhood is going to flow all over the place. I just hope it doesn't turn out to be a mess!

Anyway, I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I'm so excited about the project and learning more about all the neighborhoods you have planned!

3 comments:

Sherry said...

I am doing alot of this on my neighborhood too but am having trouble finding the historical samplers to use! I will be anxious to see yours!

Marianne said...

Teri what a great idea! Will be interested to see how your research comes along!

Teri said...

Sherry, check out all the reproductions of historical samplers at The Scarlet Letter's Web site at www.scarlet-letter.com/. I think you will love the selection! It will also be neat to see how your neighborhood comes together!