Prairie Schooler ABC Stitching Bee

Hello!  Today marks 6 weeks since I started my version of the Prairie Schooler ABC sampler.  Time is flying...and my needle seemed to be flying until I got to the letter D.  It took me almost 2 weeks to finish!  And I faced my first "big" mistake.  I stitched the base of the drum with only 4 rows of blue instead of 5.  Unfortunately, I did not realize this until a good 60% of the red body of the drum had been stitched.  I went back and forth about whether to frog it because these kind of things bother me, but finally decided to let it be and adjust the placement of the drumsticks above to make it fill the space evenly.  I am happy with the result, for which I am grateful!

I have finally settled on using DMC 221 for the red.  This means that at some point I will frog the red house in the B block and replace the DMC 498 that is there now with the 221.  I will leave the berries as DMC 498, though.  I have also chosen to make the design on the blue bowl white instead of black as it reminds me of a vintage Pyrex bowl I cherish.

I did replace the cow's spots in block C with white instead of the called-for color.  I thought it would stand out against the cream linen well enough, but it did not, so I backstitched where I could with a gold thread.  This only offered a slight improvement, but I am leaving it be for now.  I also replaced the bird in the upper right hand corner of block C with a shining sun.  I had enough of the black birds in the B block.

I have only gotten a couple hours start into block E.  I am very excited about this block as well as block F!  They are so pretty and look like fun.  There are other blocks I anticipate dreading, but we shall take it one block at a time.  :)

I am enjoying seeing everyone's progress and appreciate the recent increase in activity on this blog!  It is so fun to know there are other stitchers out there with a similar goal.  Please do forgive me for my poor photography skills.  I do have other close-up pictures, but they came out sideways and I don't have time to fiddle with them as my daughter needs help with her math problems right now.  Till next time, enjoy your stitching time, and may the Lord bless you!

Kristina