Happy Dance: Examplar IV

After the trellis motif took so long, I never imagined I'd be completely done with Catherine Theron's Examplar IV by this time!

The strawberry motif worked up fairly quickly. The leaves are all done in detached buttonhole with return. The stem uses long arm cross, diagonal cross, and colonial knots, and the strawberry itself is in tent stitch over 1 with occasional cross stitches for the seeds.

The caterpillar (who seems to be heading for that strawberry!) is also done in tent stitch, and the crown in the lower right corner is in rice stitch.

After these, all that remained were the corner motifs in double-running and diagonal queen stitches, and the personalization.

Catherine had the great idea of personalizing her sampler with both start and end dates. I wanted to do the same, but also wanted to add a bit more detail. After a bit of thought, I ended up with "2007 Mid-Eastern Region EGA" to commemorate the seminar at which I took the class. The "SMH" in "SMH 2009" stands for Strong Memorial Hospital, not that I'll readily forget where and when this piece was finished!

As of tomorrow, I'll once again be working on Joan Thomasson's Celebration Santa, which DH brought in today!

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Pregnancy ticker: 34 weeks, 1 day.
Less than 1 week to go!