Unchallenged Crewel

I have had an intense few weeks working on the SFSNAD Summer of Love challenge piece and am a little burned out embroidery-wise.

I haven't been stitching much recently, but I did complete a couple more motifs on the Elsa Williams Crewel Sampler. It's a fairly relaxing--and definitely not challenging--project to embroider.

I had been considering changing/adding to the design a bit, but I think I've decided to stitch it as originally designed. Well, mostly...

The fabric is not much bigger than the design so mounting it in a hoop, even a very small hoop, is a little tricky because there isn't enough fabric to effectively pull the piece taut. I may switch over to a squared-off hoop. This project would probably be a good candidate for an Evertite frame, but I don't have one which is fine. I'll manage!

I'm working some of the embroidery in hand. I only need tension for stitches like satin, long and short, etc. I can work line stitches (e.g., crewel outline, stem) and buttonhole without tension.

The sampler currently looks like this:

I'm looking forward to the larger motifs in the middle row.

I need to get back to the challenge piece. It's taking up all the space on my work table and I have bags of DMC floss all over the place!