March Stitching Bloggers' Question of the Month

Do you have a favorite Irish or Celtic stitched piece?  If you don't, what about a piece that represents your heritage?  Or maybe a family tree style sampler?  Think about it, then tell us the story of your piece and show us your photos, if you have them.

First, I'd like to thank Lee for continuing these questions. Always nice to have a jumping off point for a post.

I'm only showing this because of the name. It never made me think Celtic even though it's called Celtic Christmas. You know that one of these days, I am going to finish this. It's only been on a scroll frame since July of 1998. Which I know because that's when I finished the Newburyport Sampler. 

This is gets my vote for my favorite Irish piece. A couple of years ago I realized the day before March 17th that I was supposed to be demonstrating at Woodlawn on St. Patrick's Day. So I got inspired by something else I was stitching and realized that you could make a shamrock with Rhodes hearts. That first version has my name on it because I stitched it on the fly without graphing anything and my border gave me extra space at the bottom. It has four different Rhodes stitches - Rhodes, half Rhodes, diamond Rhodes, and the hearts. A tiny bit of gobelin for the stem and the background is basketweave. The cleaned up version that you see here was a class I taught last February for my guild. 

The funny part of the Irish thing was that I only had a vague notion of maybe some Irish ancestry until this winter. Now I have names and dates and will have much more fun next time we go to the Highland Games.

This above piece is a Rainbow Gallery design. It's 2/3 finished but I couldn't find a recent photo. I stopped when I got to a part that I didn't like. I've experimented with some other stitches and should really drag this one out of the closet. 

Below is my Laura J. Perin piece from Needlepointers. I was much more interested in creating a green version than stitching the red version.