I Made This!
Some of you may remember my occasional posts about cross-stitching. I'm sure you think I'm making it all up at this point because I haven't finished a project in something like 8 years, including the project I started and posted about 2 years ago. But now I've actually made something! I even made two somethings!
I was highly motivated. For those who don't know, I'm a librarian. Our craft book collection isn't circulating like it used to, so the staff was issued a (completely voluntary) challenge last August to pick a craft book out of our collection and make something from it. The resulting craft item would then be put on display along with a color photocopy of the cover of the book the craft came from so that patrons would know that they could make whatever-it-is too.
I needed to pick something small because I am the slowest stitcher in the entire world, so I poured through our cross-stitch pattern books, of which we have about a third of what we used to, and picked this from 501 Cross Stitch Designs by Sam Hawkins:
But it wasn't until after I'd bought the supplies and started on the design that I noticed the copyright date on the book was 1993. I thought I should probably promote a newer book, so I did a catalog search for cross-stitch pattern books and discovered we hadn't bought a new one in 4 years (and started to see why maybe our craft book collection isn't circulating like it used to). I hit up the selector in charge of that collection and got her to buy about half a dozen new books.
Most of the new books had some really cool designs in them, but I needed something small again (seriously, slowest stitcher in the entire world). Fortunately one of the books was right up my street and I made this from Makoto's Cross-Stitch Super Collection by Makoto Oozu:
Both are now being framed. The display goes up next Tuesday and will run through the end of November. Meanwhile, now that I don't have a deadline anymore and have rediscovered how much I enjoy doing this, I have 3 more patterns that I photocopied from the new cross-stitch books. Of course, I also have 4 or 5 projects in various stages of completion in my closet, so maybe I ought to work on one of those, since I already have the supplies for them and don't need to buy anything.
I was highly motivated. For those who don't know, I'm a librarian. Our craft book collection isn't circulating like it used to, so the staff was issued a (completely voluntary) challenge last August to pick a craft book out of our collection and make something from it. The resulting craft item would then be put on display along with a color photocopy of the cover of the book the craft came from so that patrons would know that they could make whatever-it-is too.
I needed to pick something small because I am the slowest stitcher in the entire world, so I poured through our cross-stitch pattern books, of which we have about a third of what we used to, and picked this from 501 Cross Stitch Designs by Sam Hawkins:
But it wasn't until after I'd bought the supplies and started on the design that I noticed the copyright date on the book was 1993. I thought I should probably promote a newer book, so I did a catalog search for cross-stitch pattern books and discovered we hadn't bought a new one in 4 years (and started to see why maybe our craft book collection isn't circulating like it used to). I hit up the selector in charge of that collection and got her to buy about half a dozen new books.
Most of the new books had some really cool designs in them, but I needed something small again (seriously, slowest stitcher in the entire world). Fortunately one of the books was right up my street and I made this from Makoto's Cross-Stitch Super Collection by Makoto Oozu:
Both are now being framed. The display goes up next Tuesday and will run through the end of November. Meanwhile, now that I don't have a deadline anymore and have rediscovered how much I enjoy doing this, I have 3 more patterns that I photocopied from the new cross-stitch books. Of course, I also have 4 or 5 projects in various stages of completion in my closet, so maybe I ought to work on one of those, since I already have the supplies for them and don't need to buy anything.