Many years ago I took a class from Merry Cox, it was at a Shepherd's Bush Retreat. The design was called Flowers From Thy Heart. I liked the idea but felt that it was not quite what I wanted.
Several months ago, I picked it up again for the UFO challenge for our EGA group. I decided that the design did not have enough sampler motifs for me, so I started adding to the design. I ended up using just a tiny bit of the original design. I liked the queen stitch flowers so I kept those and the original colors and linen. I did add one more green but kept the limited palette of red, pink, green and tan.
Merry loves queen stitches and puts them in many of her pieces. One of her designs has hundreds of them in the flowers.
I also added smalls because what good is a sewing set with out a pincushion, scissors sheath, emery, ort box and needle/thread case.
This is the sampler that I can turn into a tray by tying the ribbons at the corners to form a shallow tray to keep all of the supplies in.
The needle/thread case was fun to create. I found a verse that I liked and charted it so that the verse is readable when the case is closed. I made folded needle papers that are labeled with the sizes and type of needle. I copied the lining fabric onto photo paper and cut small thread bobbins from it.
The scissors sheath holds both a hemostat and matching scissors.
