Mary Campbell of Scotland, a tribute sampler

All of my Grandparents passed through Ellis Island and came to this great land of freedom and opportunity. My Grandmother came from Glasgow Scotland a long, long time ago.  She was very proud of her Scots heritage as I am. My mother told me that she often spoke of William Wallace and how proud the Scots were of that brave and determined man. She also loved music.....lots of different kinds of music. I remember when I was 5 and would go spend a week with my Grandparents....she would play opera music.....which I wasn't too fond of at 5 years of age.....and then she would put on the records of the bagpipes......now THAT kind of music I learn to love. I still get a shiver up my spine when I hear a bagpipe.......and it takes me right back to my childhood and spending time with my Grandmother. The first song I remember was Scotland the Brave......and still my favorite to hear on the bagpipes.
      I want to design a series of samplers as a tribute to Mary Campbell. This first sampler is "My Teacher". In future samplers I will incorporate a stone house as so many of the Scots samplers have.....and I think I will do that sampler in reds, green and gold as a Tartan cloth might be. I have a lot of ideas for motifs and border elements......and I am lucky that we have such a vast supply of materials to design with.....elements that were in short supply many years ago when our ancestors were designing samplers.
   I will be sending this sampler design off to the model stitcher in Alaska today and then I will start on another tribute sampler. I have a lot of plans for this year....a lot of designs I hope to put to paper and have them stitched. I hope to find some time to do some of the stitching.....by the time I am done with a pattern I am starting on another one and they get very time consuming to say the least. Add dyeing a few hundred thousand yards of floss, counting and putting it on the cards.........and you can imagine how busy I am.

I hope all of you have a wonderful Memorial Day. We have so many brave people that have fought for this country, my husband included. He served 31 years in the Army as a Colonel and received several medals in Vietnam when he was injured while saving his men. My grandsons are the first to thank him for serving his country. Those young men make me proud!

Have a wonderful weekend. Thank you for stopping by.
Nancy