Accepting a Challenge

Stitch Bitch has offered a challenge: take a specific freebie and make it your own, in execution and finishing. Normally, I don't rise to such challenges since I have way too many unstitched charts of my own choosing filling my "to do" basket and binders.  But this particular freebie, Be True by Plum Street Samplers, appealed to me.   Also, after stitching almost exclusively on UFOs from January through April, I was so ready for a new start.   I got this little bit done in late May and the very first few days of June.  I am still not sure I am going to enter the piece in Anna's competition ... there are a number of errors that need frogging and fixing before it is contest ready: a miscount of one damnable thread in the border, as yet unfound, and some miscounts in centering the added text.  But it has been fun making this design my own.

Excuse the poor photo.  The weather is overcast today.

What I have done is:

Changed the color scheme, replacing the DMC with Belle Soie as follows: 310 with Noir, 3051 with Beanstalk, 223 with Apricot, 221 with Terra Cotta, and Ecru with Oatmeal Scone.  I tend to like autumn color ways much better than pink ones.

Added the remainder of the quote from Polonius' speech in Hamlet.

Designed a border of rice stitch in Terra Cotta and Apricot interspersed with satin stitches  in Beanstalk and outlined with backstitch in Noir, thereby incorporating most of the colors in the design proper.  I am hoping to locate the counting error as I add the tiny crosses in the rice stitches and I am really hoping it won't involve too much frogging when I find it.

I still haven't decided on just how I'll finish it: bell pull, tote bag or pillow.  I am leaning toward a bell pull finish if I can find the right hardware in my stash.  I'll have to check on the widths of the bell pull rods in the bottom drawer of my sewing center.