I've been under the weather this last week, and I'm still a bit congested and I can barely talk, but on the whole I am feeling much better.
In last week's entry I said I would throw together a post with all the projects I worked on last year. This post will be very picture heavy, so I will be putting the pictures under the jump. I was a busy bee last year with how much stitching I got done. Partly because it gave me something to do to fill the hours and partly because it gave me something to focus on instead of pain.
The biggest deterrent from stitching for me in the past was the lack of designs that suited my tastes. Turns out that I just wasn't looking in the right places all these years. There was plenty out there that I would have loved to stitch, I just didn't know where to find it. While the craft stores carry quite a few patterns and kits that I like, most of what I've done in the last year has been things I found online or in magazines that I didn't even know existed.
As I mentioned last week, I found a set of bookmark charts by Sandy Orton and they were the first things I dove into stitching. After stitching a few of those, I started finding designs I liked on Etsy and I found a lovely kit by Joan Elliott, who has quickly become one of my most favorite designers, at JoAnn's on the reduced price rack. Anyway, onto the pictures.
2.06.2013
A passion 20+ years in the making
I've been sitting here a couple days now trying to decide what my first post in this here blog should be. In a gchat conversation with Amanda (one of my best friends), I asked her for an idea and she suggested that I write about how I got started in cross-stitch. In order to do that we'll have to time travel back to when I was 7 years old and sitting at my grandmother's house.
She was watching me one afternoon, I don't remember all the details, but I do remember watching her work on making some cross-stitched Christmas ornaments. I looked at some doilies she'd made crocheting that were in her project box and asked her if she could teach me to make them. She said it would be too difficult a craft to learn at my age, but honestly, I think she was just in the groove of cross-stitching and would rather teach me that than to pull out a whole different set of tools.
I wish I could remember what my first project was, but I can't. What I do remember was the joy of learning something new from my grandma, whom I loved dearly, and knowing that we now had a new bond.
Over the years I would dally with a project or two when the mood hit, but I never got seriously into it. I'm not sure how many or few projects I did as a child or even what they were until I made a gift for my step-dad in middle school. We've never really gotten along, but I decided to sign the bottom of the project with "To: Dad" instead of "To: Bill" to show that I did like him even if he annoyed the heck out of me.
I think I wound up stitching another small project or two from that same pattern book, but if I did, I have no clue what I ever did with them.
The next project I really remember working on was a Winnie the Pooh & Eeyore Best Friends Forever design that I gave to my best friend Liz shortly after her daughter S* was born. I worked on it during my second or third year at college. It took me a few months to finish it, but it was also the biggest project I had ever worked on. There were several mistakes made in the design, but I think I managed to mask them pretty well. * name omitted due to her being a minor.
After I was back home that summer I wound up finding this beautiful peacock design in a Dimensions Gold kit. It was 5 x 7" but it was pretty much fully stitched and vastly more difficult than the Winnie the Pooh project. Every time I got frustrated with it, it would go back into a bag and be tucked away for months at a time - sometimes longer. I eventually finished it around Christmas in 2009 (about 6 years after I started it) and gave it to my mom, whom I had been promising it to for years.
That year for Christmas I inherited my mom's floss collection, which also had floss she had inherited from my grandmother. I also got scads of fabric and other stitching necessities for gifts from both my mom & step-dad as well as my dad and step-mom. I had great plans to make my own designs and stitch a whole bunch of things, but for many reasons that just didn't happen. I was busy balancing work and dealing with depression, chronic pain, fatigue and frequent migraines. Things I am still dealing with today, but I'm continuing to improve in my ability to deal with despite the fact that they still plague me.
It wasn't until about a year ago that I got the itch to stitch again. I didn't have a job and thus had a lot of free time on my hands. I went out in search of some patterns that were modern and in colors and styles that suited my taste and wound up with Sandy Orton's "Hold That Thought!", a pattern book filled with bookmark designs. I stitched one pattern with what I had on hand in my stash. And then I wanted to do another. And another. And another. Stopping somewhere in the midst of that to buy the threads and fabric I needed to work on those projects. That book reignited a fiery passion in me and I have been stitching as much as my body and budget will allow ever since.
Last year I managed to complete nearly 50 projects and had 4 in progress by time the new year rolled around on Jan 1, 2013. I'll make a post with all my projects from last year and the handful I've already managed to do this year sometime soon. I think I've done enough blogging for today.
She was watching me one afternoon, I don't remember all the details, but I do remember watching her work on making some cross-stitched Christmas ornaments. I looked at some doilies she'd made crocheting that were in her project box and asked her if she could teach me to make them. She said it would be too difficult a craft to learn at my age, but honestly, I think she was just in the groove of cross-stitching and would rather teach me that than to pull out a whole different set of tools.
I wish I could remember what my first project was, but I can't. What I do remember was the joy of learning something new from my grandma, whom I loved dearly, and knowing that we now had a new bond.
Over the years I would dally with a project or two when the mood hit, but I never got seriously into it. I'm not sure how many or few projects I did as a child or even what they were until I made a gift for my step-dad in middle school. We've never really gotten along, but I decided to sign the bottom of the project with "To: Dad" instead of "To: Bill" to show that I did like him even if he annoyed the heck out of me.
 |
| Photo taken a few months ago. He has it proudly displayed in the living room. |
The next project I really remember working on was a Winnie the Pooh & Eeyore Best Friends Forever design that I gave to my best friend Liz shortly after her daughter S* was born. I worked on it during my second or third year at college. It took me a few months to finish it, but it was also the biggest project I had ever worked on. There were several mistakes made in the design, but I think I managed to mask them pretty well. * name omitted due to her being a minor.
After I was back home that summer I wound up finding this beautiful peacock design in a Dimensions Gold kit. It was 5 x 7" but it was pretty much fully stitched and vastly more difficult than the Winnie the Pooh project. Every time I got frustrated with it, it would go back into a bag and be tucked away for months at a time - sometimes longer. I eventually finished it around Christmas in 2009 (about 6 years after I started it) and gave it to my mom, whom I had been promising it to for years.
 |
| Dimensions Gold: Beautiful Bird completed in 2009 |
It wasn't until about a year ago that I got the itch to stitch again. I didn't have a job and thus had a lot of free time on my hands. I went out in search of some patterns that were modern and in colors and styles that suited my taste and wound up with Sandy Orton's "Hold That Thought!", a pattern book filled with bookmark designs. I stitched one pattern with what I had on hand in my stash. And then I wanted to do another. And another. And another. Stopping somewhere in the midst of that to buy the threads and fabric I needed to work on those projects. That book reignited a fiery passion in me and I have been stitching as much as my body and budget will allow ever since.
Last year I managed to complete nearly 50 projects and had 4 in progress by time the new year rolled around on Jan 1, 2013. I'll make a post with all my projects from last year and the handful I've already managed to do this year sometime soon. I think I've done enough blogging for today.