The Marquoir

Here is the main project I'm working on. It's called the Marquoir, which I believe means "sampler" in French, and it's by Isabelle Vautier. It comes with a story and contains symbols of her life and allows for the stitcher to substitute symbols that are important to them.
A lot of people call it the Legacy Board Sampler, because that's where the pattern was posted several years ago. It was really popular for a time, and my mother-in-law has finished and framed it.

Here are my threads:
Just three colors--red, yellow and green--plus metallics for accent. I am using Gloriana silks in Olive Grove, Honey Bronze and Dried Pink Roses. One great thing about silks is that you only need one thread for good coverage. So even though silk is a lot more expensive than cotton, it has 12 strands, as opposed to cotton's six, and cotton generally requires two threads for the same coverage.

I believe this sampler was originally a mystery sampler and it has nine sections. I recently completed--mostly--section four:
I mentioned that these are symbols from the designer's life--this section has to do with her moving to the city (Paris) and living on her own. You can see there is a large blank section. The designer went to hair cutting school and she put symbols of that here. I've never cut hair in my life. (Unless you count the time I attempted to cut Jazzboy's hair when he was a toddler: I chased him around the room and cut a bit of hair off whenever I caught him. I wish I had pictures of that.) So I've decided to put some of my own symbols there: a Y for BYU, a volcano for my years as a geology major, and a book for my Humanities degree. I just need to design these.

Section 5 is my favorite so far:
It has to do with music, which has lately been a new hobby for me.