A Break from the Band Samplwe.

I am taking a break from the eye strain inducing Algerian eyelets of the band sampler for a while.  

Yesterday was a snow day so I got in a bit more stitching on a blessedly simple project, Milady's Tea Shoppe, from the Town Square SAL.  Of the eight folks who originally signed up for this SAL, I believe I am the only one still actively stitching along.  

Since I am stitching  the charts in this series from stash, I have had to do quite a bit of substituting.  This has been made a bit more complicated by the fact that I have never been able to find color photos of the stitched models.  I am left guessing at the designers' original intent.  The best I can do is keep my substitutions in the same color families which is what I did when I substituted GAST Freedom and Old Blue Paint [both blues with grey undertones] for the called for GAST Liberty and CC Blue Beadboard.  It would have irked my frugal soul to buy a card of Blue Beadboard in order to stitch  a mere 14 stitches: the valances in the two first floor windows and in the door  window.  It made better sense to work with the third of a card of Old Blue Paint that I had on hand and adjust the remaining blues in the project accordingly.  The same has been true for some of the pinks.  I didn't have CC Second Hand Rose in stash but I did have GAST Tea Rose from the same color family   Now, I just have to come up with a substitute for CCs Bella Rosa.

The fact is I don't have many Crescent Colors over dyed cottons, probably not more than a dozen or so in all.  Though Sharon's colors are lovely, it just doesn't seem sensible to acquire another large collection of cotton over dyes when I already had very extensive colllections of GAST and WDW.  Now, Crescent Colors' Belle Soie silk line is another story entirely.  I am constantly adding to that collection.  That's my go-to silk whenever I swap out an entire project from cotton to silk.