C and G Textured Stitches Sampler - Snow!

Happy New Year to all of you!Christmas has come and gone without any snow in Berlin. I love snow and am missing the crisp, quiet freshness of newly fallen snow this year. So, to compensate, I've made my own snow!The stitches that we need to include in our textured stitches sampler include both whipped and woven wheels. I haven't used these often, but I have done them before. Last time I did them using wool which made quite fuzzy wheels. This time I'm using floche a broder and I like the results much better.Floche a broder is thick enough to fill in the space between the spokes on the whipped wheel (red wheels above). When I worked the whipped wheel (white wheel above) the floche a broder laid smoothly along each spoke and made a nice, smooth wrapped spoke. I included long bullion knots in this part of the sampler and those, too, look great worked in this thread!I love the visual link between the spokes of the whipped wheel and the long bullion knots. When I was thinking about the seeding, I remembered these "star" seeding stitches shown in Tracy A. Franklin's book Crewel Work and decided they would work in the general style of the whole centre section.Originally, the area on either side of the wheels was left empty. However, I wanted to experiment with this style of seeding and decided it was a great way to extend the spokes design element of the centre section.You can see that the top area of the sampler is more linear than the middle. Everything is in rows and made up of straight lines or dots - which are in rows.At the bottom of the lower section I decided to do a bit more traditional seeding using simple seed stitches and small 'v' seed stitches. This pattern will continue across the bottom of this section, using all three colours. Below this area of tiny seeding stitches I'll do more linear work but haven't decided exactly what it will be yet.I've so enjoyed the challenge of using a set of stitches but being given the freedom to arrange and use them however I choose! Have you ever done anything like this - where you make it up as you go along? Do you like it? Why?