Cross Stitch Completed

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I have officially stopped following my rotation. Or it would probably be more accurate to say that my rotation has changed. I skipped Noah’s Ark and plan on skipping Our Family as well. I just can’t stand to even think of working on them at this time. Maybe I’ll feel differently the next time that they come around.

O Jerusalem can be a little daunting because there are huge patches of it that are basically the same color. I have to confess that I had a hard time starting work on it because it seemed a little boring. However, as areas started to fill up I was excited by how good they looked. I felt compelled to continue stitching so that I could see other parts fill in. There is still a long ways to go before this really starts to look like something, though. At the rate I am going I sometimes wonder if I will live to see it finished.

The Cardinal Sampler stands as a witness to the fact that with an easy design and a sufficient amount of willpower I can still stitch a project in a reasonable amount of time. It only took about a month to stitch. When I first started stitching it I was a little worried because the shades of red and green that were specified used just didn’t look right to me. They didn’t look much like Christmas to me. I was amazed to see how the backstitching darkened the colors up and made them look just right. I especially like how this sampler looks like an illuminated manuscript.

Stretch was an experiment to see if I could handle the blended-thread madness that is a Teresa Wentzler design. The experiment was a successful one. I also learned how cool blending threads can be. At first glance some of the blends in this design seem strange. However, when they are stiched into the picture they look perfect and downright cool. After I had finished it my mother made it into a bookmark for me.

This is the piece that got me started cross stitching in the first place. When I saw the leaflet I had to make it. At the time I had little concept of how long it would take or how much it would take out of me. One of the hardest things about it was all of the white-on-white snow that I had to stitch. I was excited to be able to start working on the village in the background only to find that working with one strand of floss presents its own series of challenges. To be honest, the village in the background was such a challenge that I spent a year working on other pieces because I couldn’t bring myself to do another stitch. Reason prevailed, however and I finished this piece about three years after I had started it.

The amount of time spent stitching this piece changed me, however. To this day I cannot look at the finished product with the same amount of admiration that I looked at the leaflet so many years ago. I guess that familiarity breeds contempt and I am just too familiar with this piece. During the time spent working on this piece I realized that it was also possible to stitch more things at once. Now I have several pieces in various stages of completion.

I never really realized how big this piece was until I had it framed. It was only then that I truly understood the feat that I had accomplished.

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.” When I saw the chart for this piece, I knew that I had to stitch it. There is a song based on this scripture that I especially like. The prospect of doing specialty stitches in addition to the run-of-the-mill cross stitches was an added bonus. I really like how this turned out. As an added bonus, my father-in-law helped me make the frame out of a strip of moulding bought at the local home improvement store, so this piece is all mine.

This is the first piece that I stitched on linen. I enjoyed working on linen so much that I haven’t really gone back to Aida. It is also the first piece that I felt merited being put in a frame. I have fond memories of watching Babylon 5 while I stitched the flowering shrubs in front of the cottage.

Santa’s List was the second piece that I completed. I learned quite a bit from the 1932 Chevrolet. I learned that I liked higher-count fabrics because the design looks more realistic. I also learned how to make my stitching more uniform and neat. I love Santa’s face in this piece. It looks so realistic. I became amazed at how different colored lengths of floss could be used to create such a detailed picture.

This is my first cross stitch project. I look at it now with a little embarrassment. The stitches aren’t even and the Aida thread count is so low that the stitches don’t cover the squares completely. I ran into problems ending off under the grille, so the back looks a little messy. However, I enjoyed working on this so much that I was hooked and couldn’t wait to start something new.