Behind the String: An Ornament for Dad

I blogged about my dad back in 2012.  He died when I was 21.  Even though I was technically an adult at the time, it was still difficult.  He missed both college graduations, my wedding and both kids.

A few years ago, I made an ornament to memorialize my friend who had committed suicide and I wanted to do something similar. 

I just never could find the right pattern.  Then I realized I was looking for the wrong kind of pattern.

My father was born with a hole in his heart.  Today, this is easily fixable, but in 1949, it was a major issue.  He had surgery to fix it when he was 13 but his life expectancy was a mystery.  The originally said 25.  Then they said 40.  He died at 56 so he doubled his original estimate.

Because of his experience, he collected heart memorabilia.  Especially heart stamps.  Lots of heart stamps. 

So, I decided, his memorial ornament should have a heart also.  I quickly found one.

 "Christmas Love" by Lizzie*Kate

I put his name and dates on the back.  Found an appropriate font.

Now, 12 years after his passing, he is finally a part of my Christmas tree.  And that's the story behind the string

Behind the String - Pooh Ornament

Welcome to a Christmas edition of Behind the String.  Hope y'all had a great holiday.

My youngest daughter, Adèle, has PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified) which is related to Autism (she has not been formally diagnosed with ASD yet).  Even though she is almost four, she has very few words (most of them are about food) and mostly speaks in jargon.

She's very cute though

For my 2012 ornament for Adèle's ornament box, I made a Pooh ornament from a kit that I got at SCRAP.  I try to make ornaments that match the girls' interests and Adèle enjoys both the original Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and the newer Winnie the Pooh that was released a few years ago.

I hung it on the tree this year, toward the bottom.  Adèle was pretty excited about the Christmas tree and ran over to explore it after dinner one night.  She saw this ornament, pointed at it and said, quite clearly, "Pooh."

Obviously, this is huge considering the fact that she's mostly nonverbal.  I guess she liked the ornament.  Score one for Mommy!

And that's the story behind the string.

P.S. After I posted this posting, Adèle saw the picture of her Pooh ornament, pointed at it and said "Pooh."

Behind the String: Amazing Grace or How I Bit Off More Than I Could Chew

I have talked about this piece before but it bears repeating with more details.

Amazing Grace was the second piece that I ever stitched (although it was the third piece I finished).  I had finished the Learn a Craft stamped cross stitch frog that summer which taught me how to stitch.  I was in the local craft store, Accents (an independent craft store that is sadly out of business now) and I saw the kit for this piece.  It was just after Thanksgiving and I thought "hey, that would make a nice Christmas present for Mom."  So, I bought it and brought it home to start it.  It is stitched over 2 on 28 count evenweave, which I had never done.  I had to read the instructions in the kit to figure out how to do much of the stitching.  By Christmas, I only had the border around the words in the middle stitched.  I was also keeping this a surprise for Mom so I had to work on it when she wasn't around.  I would stitch on it in my room all the time and have a pillow handy to throw over it if she walked in so she wouldn't see it.

Instead of having it done by Christmas, I had to done by summer and then got it professionally framed.  The backstitching of the notes and the staff and the lyrics took as much time as stitching the border.

My Mom loved it and it hangs over her bed.

And that's the story behind the string.

Behind the String: The Worst Mounting Job Ever!

Sadly, today's Behind the String does not have a picture so you will have to use your imagination.  Ready?  Go!

First, picture a stamped cross stitch piece.

The piece is a wedding sampler with two bears on it.  Think cutsy.

Now, take the piece, roughly wrap the fabric around a 8x10 piece of cardboard and stuff it in a cheap 8x10 frame.

You cringed, didn't you.

So, this was a piece that one of my friends made for one of my other friends as a wedding present.  It was hanging on the wall in her dining room and in addition to being horribly mounted, I discovered it was also stained.  The friend that stitched the piece actually was my roommate at one point and I know that she would eat sometimes while stitching, so this didn't surprise me.

After starting at it through several D&D sessions over at the house, I asked my friend if I could take the piece and attempt to clean and remount it.  After all, it was nice of her to stitch it but apparently she didn't know a lot about mounting a finished piece.  My friend agreed, so I took the piece back to my dorm room.

I set about disassembling the piece.  It had been taped on the cardboard with masking tape (shudder, shudder).  I soaked the piece for awhile and most of the stain came out.  There was a lot of excess fabric, so I trimmed that off and carefully remounted the piece on a piece of sticky board (probably not the best choice, I admit, but I did not know how to lace and mount at that point in time).

It looked 10 times better after being re-framed.

The moral of the story: if you are going to take the time to stitch a thoughtful present for someone but you don't know how to mount it, for heaven's sake, ASK FOR HELP!

And that's the story behind the string.

Behind the String: Bert and Ernie

I finished my final masters class yesterday before student teaching (!) and I decided that this blog needs a new segment.  Last year, I guest blogged several times over at Stitching The Night Away, but once the masters degree started in full swing, I just did not have the time to do any more.

One of my favorite pieces that I did while guest blogging was "How to Create a UFO in 13 Easy Steps".  It told the tale of how "Do Not Meddle" went from being an awesome piece to becoming a UFO at the bottom of my stash box.  I realized that a lot of the pieces I have done, both knitted and cross stitched, have their own "story" behind them.  So, I give you, for your consideration, "Behind the String."

Behind the String: Bert and Ernie (or how I discovered that fractional stitches don't work well on Aida)

My childhood took place during the late 80s and early 90s, so, of course, I watched Sesame Street every day along with Mr. Rogers.  In the days before Disney Junior and Nick Jr., PBS was the only television station with children's educational programming on it, so there really wasn't much choice.

With those fond childhood memories in mind, fast forward a couple of years later.  When I first started stitching, I exclusively stitched kits.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that I didn't realize that cross stitch was available without a kit.  Anyway, my mom's next door neighbor was Catholic and in charge of the rummage sale at her Catholic church.  When I started cross stitching, she would bring home cross stitch kits that had been donated to the rummage (generally when they didn't sell at the end of the rummage).  One of the first ones that I was ever given was a Jan Lynn kit of Bert and Ernie.  I know it was a bit childish considering I was 18 or so at the time but I liked Bert and Ernie so I set to work on stitching the kit.

Now, most stitchers will agree that kits do not always contain the highest quality materials and this kit was no exception.  The Aida, especially is generally stiff and harder to work with than the stuff you buy separately.  I think this may have been the first time that I had ever dealt with fractional stitches and it was not a pleasant experience.  The Aida was so unyielding to having a needle poked through its center that I had to take one of my sewing pins and poke it through the center just to get a hole started.  That's the only time I've ever had to do that.  Besides that, the piece turned out fine.

That would be the end of the story, except, now it needed a frame.  The kit included one of those really cheap plastic frames (emphasis on cheap) but it was so cheap that I couldn't use it to frame the piece anyway.  Fortunately, an alternate frame presented myself.  My college boyfriend had decided to dump me over the phone while I was working in Colorado so I took his picture out of them frame that it was in and put Bert and Ernie in its place.

I think it turned out rather smashing.

And that's the story behind the string.