These are the projects that kept me busy all year long for the duration of 2000. They were a lot of work, but even more fun. :)
This is the birth sampler I started in the late spring of 1998. I learned I was pregnant with my second child, but since I didn't know if I was having a boy or a girl yet, I decided I should do a sampler for my then 1 1/2 year old son first. I worked on it night and day for about three days, got restless, and set it down. I picked it up again in February of 2000, so I managed to finish my son's sampler in time for my daughter's first birthday. (Pretty pathetic, huh?)
My daughter's sampler took me just over a month to finish. I was finally in the "stitching groove" and that's all I did with my free time. These two projects are now hanging in our living room for the whole world to see. (Or at least the fraction of the world that comes into our living room.)
One I stitched as a gag for my younger sister, this project was done quickly and I had a lot of fun putting it together. I need to stitch a few more of this collection, as they are all beginning to apply now that I've got a daughter of my own well on her way to becoming a teenager... *shudder*
A kit by Designer Stitches
My son is really into the Toy Story movies and is just crazy about Woody, Buzz, and Jessie. I finished Woody in about two and a half weeks. Now to get going on the rest of the characters...
This was a Christmas gift for my sister-in-law. I couldn't find an actual welcome sampler that used the Pooh characters, so I sat down with the books I have and picked out the patterns I liked. I spent about three hours charting out where they would go and what the lettering would be, and by the time I was sure what I wanted to do, I was also sure I never wanted to look at another cross stitch pattern for the rest of my life. I was also ready to dump everything I owned that had anything whatsoever to do with stitching out of the nearest window. Once I started working on it, however, I had a blast with it, and was able to finish it in about three weeks.
A Christmas gift for my husband's stepsister, this was my first attempt with linen and was very slow going. It took me a month to finish the angels and then I realized I had misjudged the amount of fabric I had to stitch on. I ended up having to skip the sky, and instead stitched in "Welcome".
This was a birthday present for my Mother. I worked on this one in my free time while the kids were up and about (the times that I couldn't work on the Tiger). It's a quick project and really easy, so it took only a week and half to finish at a rate of maybe 30 minutes every other day.
My parents' Christmas present, this one is very easy to stitch (it uses ONLY full cross stitches), but it's time consuming because of the constant need to change thread colors. I put the first stitch into the fabric and stitched for about 30 minutes, realized I'd already miscounted, frogged all of my work, started over and stitched another 30 minutes, discovered I'd made the SAME error, frogged (and grumbled) again, and finally spent the next 45 minutes meticulously counting each and every line of stitches three times before moving onto the next. Of course, it didn't help to have my friend going into convulsions of laughter with every gripe I made. (It DID help when I heard the sound of cursing, followed by that familiar ripping coming from her project instead of mine. Laugh at me will you? Muwhahahahahaha!) It took me 78 days to complete this project.
This wonderful poem was my Mother-in-Law's Christmas gift and took me about a month to finish with me working on it when I couldn't work on the Tiger. It took me longer to get around to stitching the edges down and washing it than it did to actually stitch the poem. *sheepish grin* The design is dated 1986 and I believe it is out of print.
My final Christmas gift for this year, this one was for my kid sister who is now a freshman in college and, from what I can understand from our phone conversations, needs to hang it in her dorm for everyone to see. :) Tell me that doesn't have typical cat written all over it.
(Originally typed up in 2001)
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Whenever possible, I will create a link for the project title and designer in case anyone wishes to add anything to their stash. Most times, an active link will direct you to 1-2-3 Stitch!'s online store as I've never had a bad customer service experience with this company and I tend to be loyal to a fault. If the item is no longer for sale through Joanne, I will do my best to find another active seller, but please be forgiving if something goes out of print and my links lead you on a wild goose chase before I'm aware of their shenanigans.
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