Cross-stabbing (er, stitching)

This week’s project was to cross-stitch something. In the spirit of learning from my mistakes, I decided it had better be something relatively small, which I could finish in a week. My initial thought was to cross-stitch a snarky saying because…well, sometimes those are the most fun. However, before I got into my search, I had an epiphany that I should put my mascot, Quirky Squirrel, on a small frame, which I could then hang in my office. Brilliant, yes?

Off to the craft store I went! I am proud to report I actually made sure I had a copy of my Quirky Squirrel on my phone to compare colors. After some perusing, I selected some small skeins of yarn that were more or less the right colors. Then I moseyed on over to find some cross-stitch material…. or a burlap bag – whichever I found first. I found some circular frame holder-thingies (I don’t know what they are called), but, even better, I found some square burlap swatches (evidently, they are called “aida cloth canvas”, already attached to square frames, thus eliminating any type of “framing” step that I would no doubt attempt, but, realistically, run out of time and never finish. Kudos to shortcuts.

Before I left the craft store, I bought a very small cross-stitch kid of a unicorn head so my daughter could be included in the process if she so desired…she did not, which is probably a blessing in disguise because what I thought to be a unicorn cross-stitch kit turned out to be a “punch needle” kit, which I have no idea what that is and probably would have spent a few frustrating hours learning and then explaining and helping her learn how to do it.

Next, I needed a pattern. I didn’t have a pattern, which was a minor setback, but I had a picture of what I want to cross-stitch. I googled how to make a pattern and found a nifty little app online that creates a pattern for you after you upload a photo…theoretically. The program I found didn’t clearly separate the colors the way I wanted them to be (seriously, there are only five different colors, plus black and white – I didn’t think it would be a problem, but apparently it was). Thinking outside the box, I figured I could print the photo on graph paper to give me all the little Xs for my pattern…but I didn’t have any graph paper. Instead, I pasted a small picture of my mascot in a Word document and inserted a table (like, an Excel graph) on top of it, making sure my little squares were, indeed, more “square” instead of “rectangular” so my design didn’t look like a reflection in a fun-house mirror.

Time to start! Wait…I thought it best to Google some basic tips for cross-stitching. Apparently, you are supposed to start in the middle of your fabric to make sure that your creation is centered. So, I measured and found the middle of my framy-thingy and marked it in pencil. It was then that I had another brilliant idea to write “top” on the back of my canvas, because I knew it wouldn’t resemble much at the beginning and I could totally anticipate getting it literally flipped upside down…that foresight came in handy more than a couple of times. Anyhoo.

Next, I had to find the center of my paper pattern, so I counted twice (ore more) and marked (in pen) the X and Y axis of my picture creating four quadrants. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Breaking the picture into four sections did make it a bit less daunting…although, I will say that it’s tricky not to lose count when you are making what feels like a zillion little Xs. By the way, did you know that there is apparently a right way and several wrong ways to make an “X” with needle and thread? Well, there are. Apparently, you are supposed to go from bottom left to top right and, if you are making more Xs in a row of the same color, you keep doing the “bottom left to top right” one box at a time until you get to the end, at which point you then go from bottom right to top left and make the second line of the X on the way back. I feel like I learned so much this week.

Since the center of my squirrel started with a dark brown thread, I decided to do all the dark brown Xs first. A few rows into it, I realized it might have looked better using two threads instead of one single thread, but what was done was done. In my first (multi-hour) setting of actual stitching, I finished half of the brown. Once I finally made all the brown Xs, I moved on to the orange and peach. I must say, when you don’t have a clear pattern, it does make it slightly more difficult to make your final product resemble the picture…but, in the words of my mother, “No one knows what it’s supposed to look like except you.” (Translation: No one will know if you mess up, so pretend you didn’t.)

After many, many…many hours of stabbing a piece of burlap with a needle a few thousand times (usually in the correct order), I have walked away with a few more lessons, namely (1) cross-stitching is not for the impatient, (2) if you get lax in tending to your thread, it will get tangled, even if it is the recommended less-than-eighteen inches long, (3) lighter colors are harder to see on a light background (yeah, I know, duh, right?) so it helps to have something dark behind or beneath your burlap so you can see the little holes a bit easier, and (4) those who do cross-stitch are severely underappreciated.

So, after a week of squeezing in a few stitches here and a few stitches there, and nearly an entire day of stitching thinking I was “almost done,” I now have a six-inch-by-six-inch frame of a two-inch by two-and-a-half-inch embroidered Quirky Squirrel…and a few very annoying kinks in my neck. Grumbles aside, I had fun making her and, even though she doesn’t quite look like her photo, I think she’s pretty stinkin’ cute. How can you NOT like a squirrel with eyelashes – especially one with reading glasses, a book, and her hand on her hip? Now, since I have a very skewed concept of how productive I can actually be in a week, I best get started on next week’s project.