And now for my next trick...

A few weeks ago, my voice teacher* asked if I thought I might be able to reproduce a baby sampler that she'd received when her daughter was a baby, so that she'd have a gift for her new grandson's upcoming baptism. I took a look at the piece, probably 30 years old, maybe stamped cross-stitch, and thought I would give it a try.

So I took a picture with my cellphone camera (amazing resolution on those things nowadays!)


I charted it out and made a few minor tweaks. Most notably, brightening up a few of the colors, but also converting most of the satin-stitch ribbons to cross-stitch.

Just over a week after I first put needle to fabric:


I used 25-ct cream lugana, so it's larger than the stitch count would normally be, but still a little smaller than the original. It stitched up pretty quickly, especially since it's football season and I wasn't timing my hours on this.

I pinned it last night and will lace it tonight, and will be able to get it to my teacher before she leaves town for her grandson's baptism this weekend.

I'm pretty happy with the reproduction, and it was fun working with all the bold colors that I'd likely never use otherwise.

I still have my chart in PatternMaker for it, but I don't know anything about the original designer, so I'm reluctant to put it up over on Tor Rhuann. If you do recognize it, please drop me a line!

---

* Yes, voice teacher. Been taking lessons about a year and a half. Starting to develop into an adequate mezzo, though I doubt I'll be competent enough to be doing solos with any regularity. And you won't see me at the Met or on American Idol.