Ch-Ch-Ch-Chains*

I've been chaining.

The little blue dividing band wasn't horrible.

The green one wasn't horrible, but just as I got the pattern in my head, the middle section changed. On purpose.  Then just as I got that pattern sequence in my head, it changed back.

This created new neural pathways, hopefully, and not just brain cramps.

I'd hoped to be just a little farther along on Frances Burwell this week, but I spent some time taking out stitches that had been very carefully stitched in. There were two lines of backstitching, one on each side of the sampler. On the original, the sampler had a rolled hem that was folded to the backstitched line--something that I hadn't noticed on the original when I visited her in the textile display at Williamsburg's DeWitt Wallace Museum.  I will be looking for it the next time I have a chance to see her.

Anyway, those backstitched lines ran right through parts of the patterned bands. The more I looked at them, the less I liked them. They were downright intrusive.

The only thing I can figure is that the original owners wanted to fold the sample so it would fit into a specific frame. I don't have to worry about that.

You will remember that I don't change things very often. I work reproductions as closely as I can to the original, given the changes in linens and threads. I work reversibly if the original embroiderer stitched the sampler reversibly even when I could finish the project in half the time if I just did plain old cross stitch. Yes, it's a little OCD, but I'm a first born girl child and we tend to be perfectionists and rule followers, except when we're not.

So I've decided I'm now stitching an adaptation rather than a reproduction.

After all, if I start to feel guilty about not being as exact as possible, I can always put them back in.

That way lies madness.

*apologies to Aretha