. . .Namely, my past history of craziness, and most specifically, of getting into a lot larger of a project than I ever intended. I don’t start out thinking “Let’s see how time-consuming and difficult a project I can come up with?” Actually, I usually start out thinking I am making a simple project. Sometimes I am—simple doesn’t equate “easy” or “quick”. But usually, what does me in is my fixation on “doing it right”—or, at the very least, doing it my way, regardless of words of reason to the contrary.
In October of 2000, I decided I would make a cross-stitch for my father’s birthday (in late November). I’d never really done any cross-stitch—just enough to know it couldn’t possibly be that hard (read: one, small, tiny project). The perfect grid of holes was there, and all you had to do was get a needle through them in an “x” shape. A child could do it.
True. But did you expect me to keep it that easy? Of course not.
The project I had in mind was to cross-stitch a short Psalm I knew he enjoyed. That would take up the most space, and then I would do a fitting border. I commenced to finding a border that would suit the Psalm, pouring over the piles and piles of cross-stitch magazines an aunt had given me. I finally found one that was perfect—it was a border in the style of 14th century illumination. Plus, since it wasn’t a solid design (it had lots of open spaces), it would mean less stitching.
It’s from “Cross Stitch and Country Crafts”, Jan/Feb 1990; the pattern was designed by Barbara Ann Richter.
That settled, I progressed to charting out the words. I did it once, in a very basic font I’d seen in a different project. Then I did it a second time—because the first one was so utterly plain, and it would never go with the border. Of course, I couldn’t find a font that would look right (despite much searching, both in books, on the ‘net, and in magazines). So first I drafted my own alphabet, and then I charted the words for the second time.
It was at this point I discovered that the border I had chosen was much too small to fit around the words I had charted. So I commenced to re-drafting the border, keeping most of the elements, but adding in more to make it larger. As I neared the finish of this re-drafting, I suddenly noticed that all the charts in the magazines had difficulty ratings. My curiosity was piqued—I went back and checked the difficulty level for the border I’d originally chosen.
Expert.
Of course.
Unperturbed (but slightly amused), I continued. I bought all the floss I needed, but had a hard time finding a piece of canvas large enough for my design. I did finally find some, but it was something like 20 (maybe 18?) stitches per inch. I got in “parchment” color, and I was good to go.
. . .And go and go and go. I got all the letters sans the capitals done by his birthday. The rest took me about 2 years to complete. A lot of people thought I’d never finish it. I tried not to think about it, but kept plugging away. I did finally finish it, but by that point I was pretty well sick of it, and even though it’s hanging on the wall I never look at it much.
Pictures to prove my point:
This is the whole work. . .
A slightly closer view of the scene at the bottom. Note the bird in the vine on the right.
The upper left corner. . .There’s an owl in there, and you can see that there are metallic threads, right? For the serifs on the capitals, I used the metallic thread mixed with the red; I outlined the capitals with pure metallic. The gold leaves and finials were stitched in metallic mixed with brown.
A few more detail shots. You can see, among other things, the decorative stitching done on top of the color blocks in the border. The blue border with all the French knots took a particularly long time. You can also see that I outlined every single stupid leaf in black—that took a loooooonng time. The vines are stitched out of a combination of blue and black.
You can also see that the majority of stitches aren’t “whole” cross-stitches but are “3/4″ stitches, which means that instead of sticking the needle through those nice, pre-made holes, I had to stick the needle up through the center of the grid, which was much less convenient. But it made for much nicer shaping! You’ve probably also realized that what I thought was a blessing (open design! Less stitching!) was really a curse (lots of moving around and color changing!).
If you go back and look at the whole piece again, you can probably pick out more animals this time. The left side, from the top down, has an owl, a snake wrapped around the border, a lil’ humming bird, a bird I think is a wood-pecker, and a moth. The right side, from the top down, has a dove, a bird that I don’t know what is (don’t know my birds very well), a butterfly, a snail, and another bird I don’t know what is. Most of the vines on the right were part of the original design; most of the vines on the left I drafted.
And then there is the quilt. I got this brilliant idea that I was going to make a quilt to commemorate my parent’s 25th wedding anniversary. It was my first quilt, naturally, and I started it with about 6 months to go, naturally. I wanted it to have an old-fashioned sort of look about it (as though, perhaps, to indicate the longevity of their marriage), so I wanted it to be a scrap quilt. I chose a pinwheel block.
Why?
Because it would be so easy to cut and put together—all the pieces would be the same shape and size, and there would be nothing to get mixed up.
Even non-quilters are laughing at me for this one, because of course the pinwheel block has eight points which all must meet perfectly at the center! And also because, don’t ask why, I chose to cut it so that the completed pinwheel blocks were only 4″ by 4″.
As I charted this out on graph paper, I started to realize exactly how many blocks that would be. I decided to add borders. This wound up to be the equivalent to robbing Peter to pay Paul—yes, there were less blocks to cut and piece, but of course I intended to fill all of those borders with quilting. Did I mention I was going to hand quilt this whole thing? And that, in anticipation of the quilt shrinking slightly when washed, I was making it king sized? And quilting a decorative medallion in the center 12×12 block? It was my first quilt, what did you expect?
It’s been about 2 1/2 years since their 25th, and I’m still quilting the darn thing. And everyone wants to know when I’ll finish it, and how close I am to finishing it. I try not to think about it. Every time I do, I remember that the closer I get to the edge (I’m quilting from the center out), the more time it takes to get all the way around the quilt. It’s really a bit terrifying to think about it, so I try really hard not to. I did get the top pieced together in time for their 25th, but that was all. One of my brothers says he thinks I’ll get it done by my 25th wedding anniversary—and I’m not even dating. Optimistic type fellow, I guess. (I’m hoping to finish it by next year, for a total of 4 years work. But don’t quote me on that. It might be 5 years.)
This is the center block, the first hand quilting I ever did, and mostly of my own design. (I printed out pictures of floor tiles off the internet for inspiration.)
A close up of the center block, with my fingers for getting an idea of the scale:
This is the quilting on the pinwheel blocks. I chose (against the advice of all others) to not quilt the pinwheels, but to quilt the secondary (and much smaller) pattern.
This is the first border, in which I’m quilting words. This was also advised against. Here, I’m quilting the date of their wedding. You can see the freezer paper template I’m using; I traced my words onto the freezer paper, ironed the freezer paper onto the fabric, and then began cutting out the letters as I worked. I then trace the template onto the fabric with a washable marker, and quilt the letters. Crazy, no? It took a looooooot of time, but I’m happy to report I am now finished with that border.
This shows you the composition of the quilt: center block, a section of pinwheels, first border with the words quilted into it, second section of pinwheels, second border (which will be quilted in a lattice pattern), and the final set of borders, including a border of the “hourglass” pattern (the secondary pattern in the pinwheels).
Needless to say, it was of very little surprise to me that when I endeavored to sew myself a dress, I first had to teach myself pattern drafting from scratch. What else would I do? I suppose I could have raised sheep, sheared the wool, spun the wool, woven the fabric, and then learned pattern drafting. I’m rather proud of myself for not having that brilliant idea, actually.
That dress, also years in the making, is finally starting to come to a close, which is what brought all of this to mind. When working on the dress, I thought I would be thrilled to the core to finish it. I thought it would be one of the most exciting days of my life to date.
Mostly, I find that I’m already sick of it. I’ve spent so much time on it, I hardly even want it any more—I just want to be done already! This hasn’t kept me from fiddly details, and far more work that $4/yd fabric deserves (including a lot of hand stitching and some print matching). Of course not. It just means that my mind is already elsewhere—I took my sister’s measurements for drafting for her. I’m starting to work on the dress pattern for the next dress I hope to make.
But really, I feel a bit of a knot in my stomach. What’s next? I don’t mean “next” as in “whatever shall I do tomorrow?”. I mean “next” as in “what is the next overwhelming project I will heedlessly stumble into?” And, while we’re asking questions, how long will the next one take me? 8 years? 10 years? I shudder to think. Finding “things” to do is easy—I have dabbled in, not only embroidery, quilting, and sewing, but also knitting, basket weaving, calligraphy and even book binding. The list of things I’d be interested in trying some day is too long to begin. Any one of these things could suddenly explode into a Major Project, with no warning at all. These things aren’t planned you know, they just happen.
In the meantime, my list of “minor projects” is long enough to keep me busy for years to come, so I know I won’t be sitting around bored. (As if!) But the plain fact of the matter is that I rarely spend much time without at least one years-in-the-making-masterpiece. I fully expect that sometime within the next 6 month, I will once again find myself stumbling into water that goes far above my head. . .and then flounder about in the project for awhile, till I get my bearing, and then settle in for the long haul.
I expect it, but I don’t know when it will come, or what it will be. It’s rather like waiting for something horrible to jump out from behind the bushes; you don’t know which bush it will be, or what the boogyman will be like. . .and sometimes the anticipation is the worst part!
