“Because my weird has to be able to cancel out your weird, Lady Cross-stitch.”
“At least what I do is considered an art form.”
“Yes, in ye olde medieval Europe you would've been quite the catch.”
— Alexandra Bracken
A stitch in time saves uncontrollable blood loss.
— Simon Haynes
Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that - one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
It took me almost as much time to do that tiny little, 2 ½ inch square cross stitch as it did all that embroidery work on my granddaughter’s Easter dress. Maybe more.
My sister, who does some pretty amazing cross stitch, and many ladies of the stitchery guild, all tell me that cross stitch is very relaxing.
It is not.
Okay, it may be for people with perfect vision who know what they’re doing, but that’s not me. I have three different pairs of glasses, and while my reading glasses work best for stitchery projects like cross stitch, I can still only use them for a couple of hours before my eyes need a break. Funny, they don’t need a break when I use them for reading.
Plus there’s the whole “know what they’re doing” thing, which I don’t. I’m not a big fan of cross stitch, so I haven’t done a whole lot of it. Embroidery is where my heart lies.
When I decided to do myself a needle book, I thought it would be a fun, easy project to do. And it might have been, but of course I ended up making it a bigger deal than it should be.
One of my stitchery magazines included a free needle book kit, but I didn’t like the little heart-shaped cross-stitch piece that was supposed to adorn the front. So I hunted around and came up with the pattern for the above piece. It originated online somewhere, and I’d printed it out in black and white so I got to pick my own colours.
The border was the easy part. Next came the pairs of pansies in the corners that had four different colours, not counting the French knots in the center. The hearts were next, followed by the spools of thread. So far so good, in an annoying sort of way.
When it came to the little thread making a decorative swirl through it, I thought I’d get fancy and use metallic thread. That was my first mistake. My second was not giving up on the idea. Metallic thread is not fun to work with. And it’s definitely NOT relaxing!
And it didn’t help that when doing the counting for the swirl I realized my stitches were off in a couple of places. A more conscientious stitcher would have corrected the mistakes. I, on the other hand, chose to work around it. And to be honest, though there are two places where my counting was off (because there were two places where the swirl didn’t align properly) I can only spot one.
Next was the saying, which should have been pretty easy to do, except it has all those curly cues on it and the “I”s were dotted with French knots. French knots are easy enough to do in embroidery, not so much in cross stitch. It took me a while (a long, frustrating while) to figure out how to do them and not have them slip through the holes in the aida cloth I was working with.
Finally, I added the beads to the swirl and I was done. All that was left was the simple matter of putting it all together. Which turned out to be not so simple after all. I’m going to have to check out some other patterns for a needle book.
But the bottom line is, tomorrow is the last meeting of the guild before we break for summer and not only do I not have my needle book finished, I never got to re-do my name tag (that’s to having to spend an entire day doing mending for my father-in-law). But I did borrow back the Easter dress I did for my granddaughter, so at least I’ll have that to show off.
Yes, life is indeed a stitch.
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