the current bliss
2011
there are cotton cloths, scribbled with colourful cross stitch on almost every surface of our home.
no matter how much care I think I’m taking, sweetpea keeps finding skeins of embroidery floss and bringing them to me … after she’s finished her version of embroidery. This ususally involves one end of the skein being wrapped around the legs of the table in the living room, and the rest of the skein dragged through the house to me at my desk.
I am so utterly besotted with my cross stitch at the moment. As I move through our days, cooking, washing, cleaning, sitting on the train, walking between lectures, studying, I catch my mind playing with colour combinations – should I have used 453 for the shading of that eye or would 842 have looked better? Should the side borders of the autumn lake picture have acorns or fish?
And then, during the blissful hours I set aside for working on my patterns, I am so very focussed, creating shapes on the computer, trying out colour after colour after colour of orange for the blaze of autumn foliage, or the right shade of rosy pink for the cheek.
As for the houses … this is perhaps my favourite part of the pattern .. I just imagine all the different houses I would love to live in. They always have an attic – with bedrooms of course – and they are always full of colour. Mmmm … I love building houses. I can’t wait until the day Julian and I get to build our own home with real wood and real paint on real land. It would be lovely if it was indeed by a lake, or overlooking the sea. As long as my family are there and there’s grass and trees and sunlight outside, I’ll be happy. Well, and lots of colour.
Then I rush back to the cloth, grab my needle and try the combination I’ve just settled on. Sometimes, it’s a surprise, but most times, these dmc colours have become such friends over the last 22 years that I once I lay my stitches on my cloth, the image peeks out at me so sweetly that I have to jump up and go find Abby or Julian to show them.
Once, after sewing up countless pillowcases for Christmas presents, I said I wanted to be a pillowcase maker when I grew up. I’ve changed my mind.
I want to make cross stitched pictures.
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This one looks like it just might be my favorite so far…I LOVE the acorns!!!
:o)
These patterns are so lovely! Isn’t it so fun to find a new (or old) passion? Your latest one is just beautiful!
There’s something about cross stitch and houses… I use cross stitch to dream about a lot of things: quilts I’ll never get to, houses I’ll never build, gardens I’ll never make. I’m hatching my own ideas about your graphs and my girls’ birthdays… need to finish something big for uni this week and then I can think about all that. (I’m trying to strategically procrastinate.)
So lovely!
Your designs are so lovely! I remember reading about a lady in England who ran a small cross stitch shop and also made her own designs. When Prince Charles visited their village her little daughter told the prince proudly: “My mum makes pictures of little kisses”. – I think that’s what you do to – you fill your work with so much love that it brings joy to us all :-)
Lily, Hearty Congratulations on your cute shop!!!
The name of your shop is so sweet and the design very vintage and beautiful! And I have no words to tell you how breathtakingly beautiful your cross-stitch designs are! And the stories you tell with them are equally charming! Wish you all the very best in this new endeavor :)
My mom stopped sewing about 10 years before she passed. She picked up cross stitch as something to do with her hands in her little chair. I have some of her work, one hanging on my wall in my kitchen. cross stitch has a special place in my heart. your work is so perfect, I admire it so much. You always inspire.