Pinkeep - Brenda Keyes

After dithering about whether my first choice for the pinkeep for the Hooked on Exchanges exchange was too big or not, I finally decided that it was. Running short of time, I looked again at my partner's details, and picked out that she liked alphabet samplers, and purple.

So, once again I turned to a favourite design of mine, from Brenda Keyes's excellent book The Sampler Motif Book. I chose to stitch the design on antique white evenweave, with a limited edition Gentle Arts Sampler Thread. I've stitched this particular design half a dozen times at least, always using one colour thread, sometimes an overdye, sometimes not, and on many different scales, from 18 count to 6, and it always looks great.

I made this up using the conventional method for a pinkeep, although I stitched the two pieces together, rather than relying on glue. The fabric I chose for the back - or rather, the one the quilt shop lady picked, which I endorsed - can be seen in the background. It's rather nice - you can't see from the picture, but the flowers are surrounded by the words "daisy, daisy give me your answer do..."

These were the goodies I included for Jayne (who has no blog) - some overdyed threads, and some beads - all in purple, of course!