Changes to Prairie Life Sampler

 I'm struggling with Prairie Life Sampler. The design is beautiful and I fell in love with it when I first saw it but, for me, it looks crowded and cluttered. Here's a photo of the cover.

I don't like stitching fiddly stuff. I think the horses, the dog and those people and whatever they're holding -- all that looks fiddly and a bit cluttered to me.

Denise changed hers for that row and it looks great. You can see it here.

I'm thinking of taking a really lazy way out. Here's my plan:

1. Totally leave off the band that has the horses, covered wagon and people.

2. I feel like the words are too close and crowded so I've re-charged those to take up 5 rows with one extra row between them. That would take up some of the space where the horses and people are.

3. In order to use up more space, I'm going to stitch three rows of grass beneath the trees instead of just one.

4. I will leave an extra row (or two) above and below the squiggly line below the text.

5. Because I already have the border stitched, I can't (or won't) make any changes to it but, in that bottom band, I will stitch the very bottom area first (flower baskets) and move them up a row or two so they aren't sitting so close to the border. Some of that "stuff" above the flowers, I will just leave off

My plans may not work. I figure this piece will either get finished, get tossed or go into time out (forever!).  :)

Thoughts?

Here's my plan for now. When I re-charted the text, I didn't really chart every letter. I just counted the spaces and kinda roughly drew it out. I'm going to start in the center of each row and stitch a word or two left and right of center and do that with all five rows.

Then I'm going to stitch a few rows of the squiggly thing beneath the text and see where I end up as far as spacing goes.

I'll keep you posted!