Space Invaders!

Here's a sampler of space invaders I made a few weeks ago. I reckon it's going to look pretty darn good when it's framed. I'm thinking of adding a couple of butterflies around the tree. What do you think?

If anyone is interested in grabbing a pattern of my sampler, let me know and I can make one.

Old Tree

Old Tree
Originally uploaded by evilshrub

This tree comes from a freaking awesome sampler by Mary Ann Gorringe (1839-?) who settled in Australia as a baby.

DMC Colours
Dark green 936
Lighter green: 3363
Peachy colour: 945
Brown: 3045

There may in fact be only two colours but some fading makes it look like the greens and browns are different in some places.

Note that some of the tree has to be stitched 1/2 a stitch over to make it more symmetrical. It's pretty self-explanatory on the chart - I've put red around the bits I mean. Let me know if you need help.

I would like to transcribe the entire sampler from which this comes from - see it at http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=191536 - but for now, this was hard enough so I'm going to rest my eyes.

Enjoy!

Australia's Samplers

Here's a pretty cool article about Australian samplers - it's in .pdf form and has some pictures.

http://www.nsw.nationaltrust.org.au/files/magazine/magazine-autumn08-samplers.pdf

It's interesting the subtle influences Australian life had on the style of children's samplers - I'm going to try and transcribe a sampler from the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney that features a typical example of Australian 19th century public architecture as well as a black swan - a staple water bird of Australia's lakes.