Thanks to a relatively quiet week with only two late nights and one day of weekend work, I managed to make significant progress on my sampler.
I finally finished the band of tilting columns and started on the final line of lettering.
After the lettering I have room for several more patterned strips, the exact number depending on how wide each one is. I’d like to include a row of strawberries, but I haven’t found a historical pattern for them that I really like, so I’ll probably doodle up one myself. I’m also considering several inhabited bands, with dragons, lions or mythological creatures, not unlike the mermaid strip I included in TNCM.
Another possibility would be a series of two-tone patterns, using both black and red in the same strip; or another long armed cross stitch band of a pattern similar in style to the one at the top, but worked voided. That would be very heavy though, and if done at all, should probably be relatively narrow. Maybe I’ll save that for the last one, to give weight to the bottom of the composition.
String-Or-Nothing 
You are probably the first person to embroider the word "indistinguishable".