A to Z Challenge: Q is for Quaker

Today is Day 17 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge.  If you are new to the blog and haven't heard of this challenge before, the basic idea is to blog (almost) every day in April, taking one day for each letter of the alphabet. Since I have a cross stitch blog, I am blogging about cross stitch patterns in my stash and on my wish list for this month of April.

Q is for Quaker

I'm not really sure how to describe Quaker patterns if you don't already know what I'm talking about.  The best I can do is these samplers tend to be made of up many different small to medium geometric motifs.  The tend to come in either monochrome or simple color schemes.  I would describe them as tending to be more on the country or primitive style.  Of course, that's by no means a complete or hard and fast definition, so don't take my word for it.  :)

I tend to dislike Quaker patterns for the most part, perhaps because I don't really like most country/primitive patterns in general, but I do have one Quaker pattern in my stash (shock and horror).  In fact, Halloween Quaker is one of my Turtle Trot pieces for this year.

So knowing this post was coming up, I pulled the piece out and gave it a bit of an update.  Here it is now:

This is a slightly modified San-Man Originals pattern that you can download for free from Cyberstitchers. You may notice mine already looks a little different than the model picture.  There were a couple motifs I didn't like, so I moved things around a bit and changed the charted colors slightly.  I don't know if this pattern appealed to me because it was a Quaker designed by one of my favorite designers or what exactly drew me to it.  It definitely could have been the cat.  I have a weakness for all things cat, especially a SMO cat.  Although the designer must have at least something to do with it, because if I ever do another Quaker, it will probably be this Valentine's Day one (also by San-Man Originals, and also free for download from Cyberstitchers).

For this one, the draw definitely is the birds.  Or the chocolate.  Or both. 

One of the other A to Z blogs I've been reading had the excellent idea of adding links to previous posts at the end of a particular day.  So if you'd like to see my previous A to Z entries:

A is for  Alphabet
B is for Britty Kitty
C is for Carousel
D is for Debbie Mumm
E is for Eat
F is for Frogs
G is for Garden Cat
H is for Hats 
I is for Ice
J is for Joan Elliott 
K is for Kokeshi 
L is for Lesley Teare
M is for Margaret Sherry 
N is for Noah's Ark
O is for Owls
P is for Pumpkins

Halloween Quaker: New Start 9.15.14

So here's my latest project.  I've been working on lots of Christmas things lately (progress updates to come on those later).  But I've been seeing lots of projects coming out lately in my stitching forum and it's made me want to focus on Halloween instead of Christmas.  Combine that with a cute little Halloween qsnap grime guard I made the other day, and I needed to find a Halloween project.

Unfortunately, since the new job has not actually had a paycheck yet, my budget is REALLY limited right now.  So although my dream Halloween wish list project would probably be Ursula Michaels' Let's Trick or Treat or Lizzie*Kate's Double Flip Boo Club series, I really don't have the money for it at the moment.

So I went searching for a free Halloween pattern, and come across a Quaker style Halloween sampler that I liked.  Which is weird for me, because I normally don't like that style of projects, so I've never done a Quaker before.  But something about this pattern drew me.  I didn't like a few of the elements, so I modified it a bit and made it my own, and adjusted the colors a bit, and now I've got something I'm really excited about.

Here's the progress so far:

Not really sure why I decided to start in the lower left corner, but hey. That spider is one of my least favorite elements (I hate spiders!) so maybe I was just trying to get it over with. But I think it will look great once the whole thing is done.