These past two days have seen me at the Stitcher’s Hideaway retreat in Sturbridge, MA. I had a wonderful time stitching on Thanksgiving Sampler designed and taught by the wonderful Thea Dueck of The Victoria Sampler.

This beautiful piece is stitched on 28-count linen both over two and over one, and includes many specialty stitches in addition to cross stitch and Hardanger. Our homework in advance of the class was to stitch the Kloster Blocks needed for the Hardanger. I stitched a lot of the cross stitches as well as some of the specialty stitches for placement. I also stitched the Kloster Blocks on a practice piece because of my intense fear of cutting the fabric on the project piece when I’m sitting in class.

I did some stitching in class and made some progress on the piece. The lighting in my room was not conducive to getting a really good photo, but it gives the general idea of how much has been stitched so far. We spent the day on Monday going through all the specialty stitches, which included Rhodes Hearts, Algerian Eyelets, Smyrnas, Knit Stitch, and Arrowhead Stitch.

My Progress

On Tuesday we started on the Hardanger with the morning devoted to cutting and the afternoon to stitching. As I said, I have this horrific fear of cutting the threads in class so I do that all on a practice piece. Here are the photos of the first section of cutting as well as my progress on my Greek Crosses and the Dove’s Eyes.

Morning Cutting

Afternoon Stitching

We had a great time and I learned a lot. This is the third class I’ve taken with Thea and I definitely have more confidence about the Hardanger. I may even complete this piece sometime in the near future!

The model was finished as a wall hanging. I usually frame my pieces but our project included the fabric, which is luscious, for the wall hanging so I may even attempt that type of finish.

Fabric Pack

In addition to the stitching we had wonderful meals, exchanged autumnal-themed needlework gifts, and had a great show-and-tell. There were quite a few new attendees this year (about twelve out of forty), so I was able to meet and chat with people from previous retreats as well as many newbies.

I will be traveling back tomorrow so I’m hoping I avoid the traffic and the weather cooperates.

Happy Stitching!