Let the Games Begin!
Four years ago, I released “All Greek to Me” which was inspired by an earlier trip to Greece and the Athens Olympics:
This was the first of the “Ancient World Samplers”, which is a typical Cross Eyed Kat twist on traditional samplers. It has the Greek alphabet, along with some specialty stitches and a picture of the parthenon. I really enjoyed both designing this and stitching it, so it was natural that more would follow.
“When in Rome” is the result of years of studying Latin and Ancient Rome in grade school, not that I remember much of it. I still want to visit Italy, but need time do it in depth. While stitching this, my first attempt at the colors for the Colloseum just didn’t look quite right. I frogged about 3/4 of the Colloseum and restitched it. I also had a really hard time deciding what to do with sky. I don’t know how many times I played with it in the stitching program I use. I think I also stitched and frogged it. Finally I hit upon a simple solution: make the sky look like the one in “All Greek to Me”! If you’ll notice the shading is the same, but the clouds are going the other way. I also lends continutity to both designs.
I had so much fun with Greece and Rome, what to do next? I finally settled on Ancient Egypt with Egyptian heiroglyphics to make the sampler fun:
This one I had stitched by a model stitcher, who luckily sent in progress pictures. I say luckily because the color I had originally picked and tested for the darkest part of the pyramids just didn’t look right stitched up. That had to be frogged and restitched! I also wanted the hardanger look like eyes, so I made up a filling stitch to go in the cut areas. Be carefull doing that stitch, though, as it is a bit tricky!
We interrupt this regularly scheduled blog post to bring you the Clue of the Day in the Funk & Webber Designs puzzle pattern contest. The clue of the day is “Sassafras.” For a chance to win the Grand Prize (the first pattern out of the box and all the materials to stitch it), solve this puzzle. For more information about this contest visit Jen’s blog.
With three Ancient World samplers done, I needed a fourth to make it a nice set. But what to do? It had to be “old”, it had to have a different alphabet, and a recognizable monument. I thought about Russian, China, German and Hebrew, but finally decided on Mayan:
Now, this did present at least one interesting challenge. There are over 3000 characters in the Mayan language. I finally settled on using the ones that represent the days of the month.
So that was that, and the end of the “Ancient World” series. Or so I thought. There was this idea in my head still to do China with the Great Wall. But there are so many characters, I thought, and I said I was ending the series. The idea wouldn’t go away, it really wanted out. Then I realized the Olympics were coming again (funny how that happens every four years), and they were going to be in China. The idea couldn’t be denied:
Ok, cue Olympic Anthem. This design is shipping out to shops that pre-ordered it and distributors today! The characters on the left, top and right sides are the characters for the twelve zodiac animals: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Boar. The characters on the bottom (which are not upside down and backwards like they are on all the other Ancient World samplers), mean “Congratulations and be prosperous”, which is a traditional saying for the New Year (notice the tie-in with the zodiac).
Now, to count down the days until the Olympic games begin.
August 2nd, 2008 at 10:35 am
This is great, Kat. I love hearing the story behind this series. I see endless possibilities for pulling out different elements from these samplers and using them for smaller projects (a tag of my Chinese zodiac character–the horse), and I really want to stitch all the scenes together, and I want to try your Hardanger eye filling, and, and, and…
August 6th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
I love the Chinese Sampler. The others are quite beautiful too, but my Mom and Step-Dad went to the Great Wall a few years ago and I’d love to stitch it (with all the other Asian Wips I have for her).
Beautiful. And the background info is very interesting.