Have you met our friend Susan (@yardgrl60)? It’s been a few months since we’ve shouted our love and admiration for this cross-stitch queen from the rooftops! If this is your first time meeting Susan, you are in for a treat! Susan’s personal mission is to make every stitchy maker out there fall in love with Aurifloss and we’re pretty sure she is well on her way, sharing bits of magic with each and every chart she creates.
To learn all about Susan and her background, take a peek at her very first interview with us right HERE. Little Quaker Christmas is where our stitchy love affair began and we’ve just been having one big cross-stitch party ever since.
Today, we’re delighted to introduce her latest curated set, Rosso Rubino. (Are we enamored with her Italian tribute to Ruby Red? Maybe just a little!)
Rosso Rubino is Susan’s love letter to herself. It may sound silly, but the hues within are those she has selected to stitch up her very own gallery wall… full with bold, rich, and sweet red samplers, it’s a focal point of her perfectly designed home. It brings her joy and shouldn’t we all do our best to create that for ourselves each and every day?
It’s our hope that Rosso Rubino will inspire you to start your own red sampler wall and today, Susan is here to tell us just how to dive in!
Being invited back to chat with y’all always reminds me of family reunions. It seems like way too much time has gone by since we last saw each other! Thank you to Aurifil and Erin for inviting me to talk about one of my favorite subjects on the planet– cross stitch.
If we haven’t met before I’m Susan Ache (pronounced like hockey without the H) and I can be found on Instagram as yardgrl60 where I post just stuff I’m doing and playing with whether it’s stitching or quilting. I’m also a huge cheerleader for people who take colors in charts and make them their own.
Ever since I first started stitching, I’ve known that I have to LOVE the colors. If I don’t love them, it doesn’t even matter how much I love the pattern itself… I’ll never finish it! I’ll pick colors that fit my mood, colors that match a particular room that needs some new artwork, or even colors that are just inherently me. Take some time to evaluate the chart you are playing with and make sure that it fits your style and your life. I promise, it’s worth it and it will ensure that you love the entire process from the beginning to the end.
My favorite style of stitching is a Quaker motif sampler. There are so many cute shapes that can be stitched up quickly, something that allows me to see real progress during my nighttime stitching sessions. When it’s all said and done, it’s important to make your stitching as enjoyable and as colorful as your lifestyle!
I have had a vision of a red stitched sampler wall for years. I never put a time limit on it, and I never made it the main priority in my stitching. I would just pick a chart and decide if that one needed to be in red or if I wanted to choose a colorful blend and give it a different display destination.
In photographs, it might appear that my red sampler wall is filled with all of the same shades of red. Don’t be fooled! There are so many ranges starting from the lightest pinks and corals to the deepest of reds and oranges. It makes it interesting to look at and also fun to stitch. One of the things that I love most about my Rosso Rubino collection is that every single color included is represented on my sampler wall!
I’m hoping that the story of how my red sampler wall started might inspire you to set off on your own color journey! One sampler was the entire beginning of this wall. I’d chosen a Quaker Sampler that was stitched in a shade of blue. My mind instantly changed it to red and off I went. From there, it wasn’t a matter of what to choose for one sampler, it was narrowing down the possibilities for all of the samplers I was seeing.
What has really helped on my sampler wall is that my background stitching linen is the same shade of white. My very favorite linen to stitch on is a 36 count antique white linen. I always stitch over 2 with 2 strands of embroidery floss. Stitching on other counts of linen can be fun, so I have collected a large variety of stitch counts in the same shade of antique white. It really allows the colors to pop! That truly is a personal choice. I just love that crisp white background and how it make all of the colors look bold and fresh.
Some charts call for multiple colors. It’s okay– sometimes I choose to use the same number of colors but all in varying shades of red. Sometimes I know a chart can stand alone without a color change. When I do motif stitching, shifting colors and adding more to a motif is just fun– not required but, when isn’t playing with colors fun?
Are you thinking about making your own sampler wall? I have one major tip for you… something that I didn’t do and learned my lesson the expensive way. Frame as you go along! Boy oh boy was that a shock when I took my pieces to get framed! I did make the decision to only use four styles of frames. That was the one thing in my mind that wasn’t negotiable. As with the white linen, I didn’t want the frames to be the focal point.
I chose to include glass in the frames, mostly because I know that I have tons of cat hair floating around and cleaning glass is easier than having cat hair floating and living on my work. (LOL) I opted for museum glass to eliminate glare when I take those millions of photos for my instagram page!
I have enjoyed every stitch that has been framed on my wall and still have more space to continue adding to the wall of red samplers… I’ll keep stitching in red! It’s never a race for me. Stitching should never be your race– it should be your enjoyment– so take your time, choose your first pattern, and go for it.
Have a stitching fun day!
Susan
Many thanks to Susan for her inspiration and generosity, always! Her Rosso Rubino comes with a free chart, which is delivered via PDF after purchase. It’s hard to play favorites with her charts because they are all stunning, but we’re swooning over this one! Will you be stitching your own? Make sure to tag us at #aurifil and Susan at @yardgrl60 so we can cheer you on!
To find ALL of Susan’s amazing cross stitch charts, click on the button below. It’s a cross stitchers dream!!
ABOUT SUSAN
Instagram
A love of color makes it easy for Susan to grab inspiration from her native Florida surroundings. With no grand idea other than knowing she wanted embroidery and nine patches in her first quilt, a new world opened up to this mom of now five grown children. Being self taught with many hours of reading about the makings of a quilt and quilt blocks has made this a lifelong passion. Susan is always searching for new and fun ways to show off as many colors as she can in a quilt. Most of her quilts are a creative impulse from trips to the garden center, a photograph, or browsing through paint chip selections. “I really never see just the quilt, I seem to see the quilt in the room that it belongs in”. Working in a quilt store for years helped Susan to pursue that passion of color and the fabric inspired life she enjoys while constantly striving to make her next favorite quilt.
I’m so glad I clicked through to your blog on the website. The text renders dark gray on black and is impossible to read. Just saying.
What do you mean you stitch over 2?
Do you separate Aurifil like DMC thread?
Hi Michele — thanks for checking in! First, our floss is a 6-strand divisible floss, so you would want to separate as per usual. Susan typically uses 2 strands when she creates all of her charts. Stitching over 2 means that for every single stitch she takes, she actually crossing over 2 threads at a time– she is stitching on a linen, so that is what she is referring to — it might be different with a different fabric. I hope this helps!