I wanted to stitch something special in memory of one of my favorite designers who recently passed away, Barb Adams who was half of the Blackbird Design team. I chose Basket of Memories which was her design.
I selected a piece of 16ct French Country Mocha aida that I had in my stash and Verbascum Clementine by Victorian Motto Sampler Shoppe floss which is a lovely shade of peach (758 is the closest DMC #). I even found some of the perfect color buttons I had in my momma’s button box.
Rather than use a fabric for the backing, I used the same aida and stitched Barb’s name and the dates for her birth and death. It was a fairly quick stitch and once I finished the stitching and assembled the piece into a small pillow, I went in search of trim. Either said than done. Another stitcher suggested I check out LinenLark on Etsy. There I found the perfect ribbon 1/2″ wide in a pale peach color. I ordered it and it came fairly quickly.
Vonna Pfeiffer, The Twisted Stitcher, has an excellent tutorial on creating ruched ribbon which I followed. While working with a half inch strip of soft ribbon is very fiddly, I love the way it turned out.
I am very happy with the final result and will be using this for trim again in the future.
What a lovely design.
What a beautiful piece you stitched and finished in Barb’s memory, Pat!