Week Twenty-Two: Tulip Sampler

Did you ever have a piece that you just loved to stitch--that just flowed so beautifully and there were no missed stitches and no need to fix your mistakes? For me, this mini "Tulip Sampler" by Karen Kluba was one of them. It was offered as a freebie on the Rosewood Manor site last year, but doesn't seem to be available anymore (online anyway). Currently, there is another cute reindeer freebie on the site, though, so you may want to check that out...

I loved the colors in this tiny (2 3/4" X 3 1/2") sampler; the way they all blended together along with the whimsical alphabet resulted in a lovely finish. For "Tulip Sampler," I used white 28-count linen and DMC threads. I changed the border color from the designer's suggested green to the darkest blue color so it would work nicely in my (mostly) blue family room.

It felt so good to get much of our gardening off to a good start this past weekend. Thanks to help from two of our sons, we planted, pruned, weeded, moved rocks, dug up plants, moved plants, mulched, and got the yard looking pretty spiffy--just in time for the rain which we've had every day since Monday! Oh well, at least we didn't have to water our new plantings. One thing you won't see growing in our yard is tulips--we have such a problem with deer mowing them right down, that we don't even bother planting them anymore. Guess I'll have to be satisfied with the tulips in my stitching!