First I Drink the Coffee

Cozyegg Designs 6353 20171222

At spring Market, Beth from Heartstring Samplery introduced the second design in her Magical Elixer series, Coffee Quaker.  When I first saw it and saw that my Instagram friend Natasha was organizing a SAL, I knew I needed to stitch it.  It’s been a long time since I jumped right on a bandwagon, but I thought this was such a fun piece that it just had to be stitched.

I ordered the called for fabric 40ct Stars Hollow from R&R.  Although I’m not a huge fan of R&R, I made an exception because of the color name.  I mean, who can resist a Gilmore Girls reference?  I also ordered the three or four threads I didn’t already have in my stash.  I had decided early on that I didn’t love the bright green and bright red that were included but went ahead and ordered those two colors so I could make a decision once I had them in front of me with my fabric.  I still didn’t love them.

Cozyegg Designs 6356 20171222

Once I started stitching I realized that one of the threads called for was way too close to my fabric color, so I switched it out.  In fact, I went through my thread inventory and pulled any colors I thought were “coffee-inspired”.  I did use the called for Weeks Palomino, GAST Apple Cider, GAST Picnic Basket, GAST Dark Chocolate, and Classic Colorworks Hazelnut.  I decided to add a green, but a much more muted green.  I chose GAST Chamomile after auditioning several greens with some test stitches.  I really wanted to use my GAST Zombieflesh, because it seemed appropriate, but alas Chamomile won out.

Cozyegg Designs 6350 20171222

The threads I added were: GAST Cinnamon, Weeks Mocha, GAST Roasted Chestnut, GAST Chamomile, GAST Espresso Bean, Weeks Swiss Chocolate.  That Swiss Chocolate is my absolute favorite.  I most definitely need to get another skein of it to have on hand.  Since I switched out some colors, I had to do a little bit of rearranging in order to keep the arrangement of lights and darks.

Here’s a map of which colors I used where.

Coffee Quaker Color Changes

One of the other changes I made was with the infamous basket.  A lot of people in the Facebook group had no idea what this was supposed to be.  In sampler stitching, this is most often a fruit basket/bowl.  When I got to looking at it closely in the chart I noticed that Beth had put in some lighter colored “lines” in each of the “fruits”.  So I decided that these must be coffee beans!  In order to highlight the individual beans I did alternate colors of them so you could see they were actual individual beans.  It took a while to get my colors all sorted out, but I love love love how it turned out.  It may be my favorite thing on the sampler.

Cozyegg Designs 6354 20171222

I do also love that bird on the right hand side with the coffee bean in his beak though.ย  The only other change I made was to follow Emily‘s lead and add an extra stitch to the bird under the 17 so his beak was a tad longer and looked like a beak.

Cozyegg Designs 6358 20171222

I’m so happy with how this whole piece came out and it was an absolute joy to stitch.  I started it on April 1st and finished it on July 2nd.  Such a super fun piece.  I definitely want to stitch her other pieces in the series:

Coffee Saves Lives …

heartstrings CoffeeSavesLives400

And her newest one…

Cover Image.Fairy Coffee Mother.small

If you’ve been on the fence about joining in on the Coffee Quaker fun, or you just love coffee, these are definite recommendations for your stash!

I am grateful for coffee, coffee, coffee.

2 thoughts on “First I Drink the Coffee”

  1. I loved the Coffee Quaker when everyone was stitching it but haven’t seen the Fairy Coffee Mother before! The idea of using coffee themed threads is so much fun.

  2. I loved the Coffee Quaker when everyone was stitching it but haven’t seen the Fairy Coffee Mother before! The idea of using coffee themed threads is so much fun.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.