jeannette douglas

WIPGO 2023 – Week 24 – Down the Danube

I’ve fallen a bit behind on my WIPGO posts, so doing these after the fact in July (oops!). Apologies for that! I’ll be backdating these entries to fit where they’re supposed to go in the sequence.

Down the Danube by Jeannette Douglas is a piece that I never was meant to have. It was an exclusive for attendees of a Christmas market cruise down the Danube river in 2016, and is not for sale at any shop. I didn’t attend that cruise. Yet here I am, stitching the piece because now it has become a memorial to a lost friend.

Two members of my local stitching group, Becky and Sandy, went on the cruise with Jeannette and had a wonderful time. They stopped at several towns along the Danube river for sightseeing and market shopping, and then spent the nights on a river cruise, where they met their fellow stitchers and likely got more chatting than stitching done… because that’s how retreats always seem to go. Jeannette gave each of the attendees a full kit of Down the Danube as a souvenir.

And then in 2017, Sandy died unexpectedly.

Months later our stitching group helped her family clean out all of the stitching and crafting supplies – with plans to distribute amongst ourselves, and then to take the rest up to Celebration of Needlework to the freebie tables to give away. Sandy’s stash was divided, and along with a couple other pieces (including a Wentzler), Down the Danube came to me. I was just finishing Four Seasons of Mystic, and I had the closest connection to Jeannette among the folks in my group, so it just made sense.

Sandy had thrown a few stitches into it, but had barely started the snowtops on the mountains at the very top. I put a few more in, but then became busy with Astrology Sampler and Max’s birth sampler… and so it quietly sat and waited.

*Down the Danube by Jeannette Douglas as of May 31, 2023 – stitched one thread over 2 on 32ct Belfast Smokey Pearl with kitted threads*

I haven’t progressed too far and already have an error in my count – I made the top ridge of the mountains one column too wide. Thankfully it’s about at the halfway point, so I shouldn’t need to pick out too much. I think I’m going to fill in the house on right and then move with a better sightline rather than just do the mountaintops for my second attempt at it.

I have no timeframe for finishing this one. It will be a memory piece for Sandy, and will hang alongside the other pieces on my wall when it gets finished – exactly when it’s meant to be finished.

WIPGO 2023 – Week 18 – Love to Stitch Box

This week’s WIPGO brings us to a project I took as a class in 2018 at Celebration of Needlework. Jeannette Douglas was there, and it was the first time I can recall seeing her since my fun class in Mystic in 2011. The Celebration class was for her Love to Stitch Box – one in a series of little compartment groupings that she has designed and published over the years.

*Love to Stitch Box by Jeannette Douglas*

Our class kit came with everything to finish the project – including the box tray. Like my Four Seasons of Mystic years earlier, everything was tidy and well labeled and easy to read. If you ever have a chance to do a class with Jeannette – do so. She is an absolute gem and a wonderfully relaxed, welcoming teacher.

I started my piece in class with everyone else and had a happy little acorn done. It quickly stalled after Celebration because I was focused on completing Four Seasons of Mystic. My rotation at that time had organized into “try not to have more than one design by any designer going at a time,” due to the glut of Wentzlers I had stacked up in progress. So Love to Stitch would have to wait – Four Seasons was the project in rotation, and I could get back to Love to Stitch once it finished in 2018.

But then 2019, my energy was drawn to finishing two other big projects – Max’s birth sampler (To Have a Child- Rosewood Manor) and Teresa Wentzler’s Floral Bellpull. And then the Steotchalong grabbed my attention to stitch on the Golden Girls mystery. And suddenly it was 2020.

And… well, we know what happened there.

I picked the project up again in 2021, and quickly made work of most of the main Love to Stitch square. I finished everything but the border. I was convinced that I would get it all done that year – so much so that I actually dated the piece. (that was arrogant of me!)

And then it sat again as I plowed through some other pieces.

*Love to Stitch by Jeannette Douglas as of May 1, 2023 – stitched 1 thread over 2 on 32 ct Legacy linen from Picture This Plus with charted silks*

Between WIPGO and Stitch Maynia, my goal is to get that border done. The stitching on the other pieces for the box will not be as intense. If I can finish up this one, I’ll be very, very happy.

Hoping to have this done by the end of the year or early next year at the latest. And then the finishing will begin… 🙂