Emma's Sampler by Stacy Nash

Finished something! Words not too often uttered here at the Ranch. But taking a little bit of time off from 13th Colony, taking a break from background stitching on my HAED Dark Waters(it's a SAL weekend over on the BB), I decided to stitch up this sweet little sampler from Stacy Nash. The proper title is Emma's Framed Sampler but mine isn't framed yet. This is the sampler before distressing the fabric:

(it's cloudy here this morning)

And here it is after I poured some coffee on it and smooshed in some coffee grounds and baked it in a 200° oven for approximately two hours. The smudgey spots are where the coffee grounds were.

You can click on both images for a bigger picture.

(sorry, still cloudy two hours later)

It's stitched it on the very budget friendly Osnaburg fabric-that's what Stacy recommends on the chart, but I ran across this fabric back in 2006 and stitched up CHS Prudence Wilcome on it and also started CHS Strawberry Blonde on the same fabric. Those posts can be found here:
Musings From a Three Bedroom Ranch: Houston--We Have Pictures

and here:
Musings From a Three Bedroom Ranch: Stitchin', Crocheting, Quilting, and Bad P

There's another post somewhere where I give the fabric stats and even took a picture of the end of the bolt at JoAnn's because I'm just that dorky. At the time I thought it was the most amazing find and I was being a rebel opting to use that instead of expensive linen and now I find a designer who has used it on a chart. Guess I'm not as original as I thought but let me tell ya, at $3.99 a yard it's worth checking out since linen is currently going at about $80 a yard. As long as you don't need something to be perfectly round or perfectly square this is a great option for primitive type samplers and small primitive designs. I can't remember what it was when I counted the threads but I want to say it was 28/34. I used two strands of DMC on Emma because I knew I'd be staining and baking the piece after it was stitched and thought one strand might get lost in the coffee stain, but am only using one strand on Strawberry Blonde and I used one strand on Prudence Wilcome too.

Very satisfying project, it helps that it only took around four hours from start to finish, not including the baking time.