Probably my most obsessive and expensive hobby is counted cross stitch. Most people don't know how expensive it is, but once you start buying really high quality materials at a specialty shop is does get quite ridiculous. Most of my work isn't done on the very nicest linens with the finest silk fibers. Even so, it is typical to spend $50 or more on a piece, once you consider the cost of the pattern, the material, all the fibers, needles, beads, and other accessories you need. Few of my pieces are framed. If you want a piece of needlework framed in a way that will make it last (and after investing so much time and money already, why wouldn't you want it to last?), it is extremely costly, even without a lot of bells and whistles. The image above is not the first thing I ever stitched, but it was my first project executed neatly and on linen. As you can see, it was done in 1998. I had just turned fourteen. I added my name by writing out my signature on a piece of graph paper and then tidying it up. This was the first time I altered a pattern, and I think I have personalized everything I've done since then.
Many of the pieces I do are primitive in style, like this one. The patterns are designed to look antique. I often choose to complete a piece to mark a special event. This one commemorates January 2005, when I met and fell in love with my husband. I knew he was the one, so I started it right away. My mother bought me the pattern because she was amused by the sentiment.
Here is another example of the primitive style. This pattern would be called a sampler, because it offers a sample of the techniques and motifs the girl stitching it knew. Young women would make these as practice and in preparation for the sewing they would do as wives, and also for decoration. They could later refer back to the piece. Often the samplers include interesting verses, mostly moralistic in tone, like this one. I made this when it became clear I would be engaged soon. The stitches in this primitive style are simple, and show off the materials used (in this example, hand dyed threads that vary in color along the strands).
This piece also includes specialty threads. It's also a sampler, but more accurately a band sampler. It showcases special stitches in long horizontal bands instead of monograms and motifs. There are at least fifteen kinds of stitches in this sampler. I'm sure you can tell, but I made this sampler at the end of 1999 and the beginning of 2000 to celebrate that milestone. La Broderie designed this pattern, and it is one of my favorites because I love to learn complicated new stitches.
This pattern is also from La Broderie, and I made it when I graduated from high school. Again, it is a small piece but it has many complex stitches, different textures and color changes.
This piece is by my favorite designer, Cynthia Zittel of The Drawn Thread. Her patterns are pages and pages of instructions and diagrams for complicated stitches. Most of the time, there are bands or patchwork-like motifs. I added the verse by Vergil (which means "Love conquers all"). This piece was worked using silks on French Lace linen.
This is what I'm working on right now. In fact, I have been working on it a long, long, long time. It's my wedding sampler. It used to be very common for women to make samplers to celebrate their marriages and establish a set of letters and motifs and stitches to use in their new households. This particular one is also by The Drawn Thread and features Shakespeare's Sonnet 116. I am almost finished with the bottom half. I am enjoying this piece because it is filled with symbols of marriage and fidelity and contains specialty threads and stitches (although I decided not to buy silk threads--too expensive).If you want to learn this hobby, I urge you to look up a local needlework shop (what we addicts call "our LNS"). I am a devoted follower of the LNS in my hometown (Ocala, FL). This is their website: Brick City Cross Stitch. If you enjoy browsing around on the net, this is the place to go: Nordic Needle. You wouldn't believe how great their customer service is, and they have EVERYTHING.
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