Noah's Ark

I made this wall hanging for my first daughter. At the time (late 1970s) the nursery was decorated with gold, orange and brown tigers, and this fitted the theme very nicely. It is stitched on Aida cloth from an Eva Rosenstand pattern. It was a huge pattern for me at the time, but it went quickly, as I recall, since there are not a lot of color changes, and very little back stitching. I sewed a backing fabric on it (an uncut corduroy) and just slipped adjustable curtain rods into openings on the top and the bottom; and mounted hangers on the wall far enough apart to put the piece under a slight tension. It hung smoothly for many years. Now of course, it is folded in the drawer and only comes out for command performances like this one.



There are tigers, zebras, elephants, monkeys, hippos, giraffes, turtles, and camels, a lion, a rhino, a koala, a mouse, a rabbit, and a lamb along with Noah.

I'm very glad to have this, but I would never pick it again, my tastes have changed so much. It seems so plain, and it is one of the few things I have stitched on Aida.

Antique Doll

There has been quite a bit of conversation about this doll on one of my groups, so I thought I would talk about it here. This is a Lanarte Kit (from Denmark, I think) that I stitched while I was pregnant with my second daughter in 1981. I got it at Penelope Tree, a needlework shop in Munster, Indiana, that had beautiful kits. They have been gone for at least 10 years. It was over $80; and at the time my needlework budget was what I could save in a 5 gallon glass jug. It took more than 6 months to save up for it. My dear husband would have been willing for me to use household funds, but I could not justify that to myself.

I didn't know at the time if I was having a girl or a boy, but planned to give this to the child I was carrying if it was a girl, and to my first daughter if it was a boy, and then he could have the "Noah's Ark" that I had already stitched for her. (I will post that one next.) C. will proudly tell you that this item belongs to her, however the sampler still lives with me for the time being, since the frame broke a couple of years ago. I should probably start saving pennies again to replace the frame.



It took some time to finish (I want to think 3 years... I had to get my money's worth), and I knew who it would belong to before it was finished. I almost ran out of one color floss. I thought it was DMC floss, but I couldn't find an exact match for it. The replacement was close enough, though, so that no one could tell it wasn't the original. The part of the skirt (and sleeves) that look like a brocade ribbon appliqued and the bullion lace is almost stiff with the stitching and the metallic fiber. I'm pretty sure that was the DMC metallic that comes on the spool. As I recall, I stitched it in hand.

I entered it into a needlework exhibit in Munster a short time after I had completed it, and it won the Viewer's Choice Blue Ribbon. Mine was one of three, but one of them had been stitched with one strand (I used two, according to the instructions), and the other had left off the backstitched background.