Eve's Garden by Shepherd's Bush

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Adam and Eve just couldn't be happier!  

They are now, having given way to temptation, living in Eve's Garden, beautifully clothed.  Well, Eve is beautifully clothed;  Adam, not so much!  

I love Eve's skirt - it looks like a fairy skirt, don't you think?  

I did, for the most part, enjoy stitching this piece, as I do all SB designs, but I have a few notes for you.:

Chart Alert:

There is a small error on the chart (I called the SB gals and let them know).  The strawberry at the very bottom was missing the two rows of red at its base, just below the "seeds".  If you stitch it the way it's charted, it's fine (meaning borders will meet up but your strawberry will look funky).  If you want the strawberry to look right, you need to add two rows of the pinky/red color at the base of the strawberry and then find a place to adjust your vine by two stitches (easy enough).  I also added the year in a the tan color, over one, which I really like.

Forewarned is forearmed!

Do as I say, not as I do:

I made a few mistakes (I ALWAYS DO) that I had to compensate for later.
~ I skipped too many rows (and nothing consistent) between bands.  Count your threads!
~ I used the wrong green in several places which means I ran out of one of the greens before I should have.  Watch your Symbols!
~ I had to make some additions to the design because of miscounting.  I added a pink flower to the bottom left of the border (looks kind of like a heart) and another to the bottom right (the little yellow and black flower) to compensate for my inability to count and the incorrectly charted strawberry.  Okay, the strawberry didn't cause that much of a problem but I'm not going to take all the blame!  I also added the year, over one, to fill some of that extra space created by my growing garden.

~ I removed the heart on the upper left corner because it just got totally lost on the fabric.

This was my initial "finish" before frogging the heart:  Poor picture, sorry....

When I looked at it, I just didn't like it.  Unless you are right on top of it, the sampler just looks like it has a lot of empty space at the top.  So... I added a pair of over one cherries and found a bee button from some forgotten project (don't think it was this one) and sewed that in the corner to fill it in.  Actually - I like it MUCH better.

Soapbox:

I've stitched quite a few SB patterns and generally really like them because the patterns are sweet, the fabrics and fibers are beautiful.

BUT, and this is a big, ole but.... 

I don't like that the symbols are all hand drawn - I know it's supposed to look "folksy" or more "handcrafted" but some of their symbols are difficult to read.  In this chart, three shades of green, which are very close in color, had almost the same symbol.  There are small dots for light green, medium dots for medium green and open circles for dark green.  Really?  My mind reads "dot" when looking at the symbols so I frequently grabbed the wrong "dot" meaning I used the wrong green.  AARGH!!!  You know, as I do, that if you frog silks they get yucky looking in no time so I just left the greens as I stitched them.  In the end, you can't really tell that much difference but it aggravates me.  SB charts are expensive (IMHO) and it wouldn't be that hard to make them easier to read.  There are a ton of symbols (how about a heart or anything but dots!) that can be used - why use various sizes of the SAME symbol?  AND, if that isn't bad enough, they often use a circle with a dot inside it that is hard to read or a small square that looks like a dot.  

Seriously - This makes me crazy!!  

Don't get me started about differentiating the colors of silks.....

Obviously, I still like their designs enough to buy and stitch them and I do like their diagrams of the specialty stitches but the charting and trying to figure out which fiber is which just aggravates the p-willies out of me!

Okay, that's enough bitching for one day.

A few parting shots just because it's so pretty!

 

 Remember that little wheel I found not too long ago?  This is what I turned it into.  I used some beads I had in my stash and some old skeleton keys.  I really like how it turned out although I wish I'd used more blues.  I may have to "fix" it, one of these days.

That's all I've got for today!  I'll be back Sunday with an update on the SAL with Marilyn and Faye.   I hope to get quite a bit done between now and Sunday's post.  I had to finish this SB piece before I could get started, too much.

Have a great rest of the week and thanks so much for all your sweet comments! 

Be well.

Peace,

Terri