Meet and Greet Stitchers from Around the World

Mdm Samm is hosting a Meet and Greet with stitchers from around the world - doesn't that sound like fun? I started cross-stitching about fifteen years ago and, although I haven't done much of it since my younger two were born, floss still makes my heart go pitty-pat. 

Years ago, I worked nights in a call center. There was lots of downtime, waiting for something important to happen...and then there was no time to breathe. While I waited for alarms and radio calls, I read. And read some more. After six or seven years, I realized that no matter how much you love books, there's a limit to how much time you can spend staring at a printed page. 

A friend was heavily into needlepoint, the serious kind with expensive hand painted canvases, and it looked like fun. So when my husband asked what I wanted for Christmas, I told him I'd like a needlepoint kit. He bought me a counted cross stitch desert scene. Maybe he knew something I didn't - it turns out that I like counted cross-stitch much better.  

Hole in the Barn Door by Diane Phalen was one of the first big projects I finished. It was her designs that led me, in a very round about way, to quilting.  

But before that, I spent a few years eating and sleeping and breathing and dreaming cross-stitch. By that point, I was working very part time (opposite shifts from my husband a couple of days a week) and had two little ones. While they napped, I stitched. And stitched. And stitched.  

My thing was landscapes, the bigger and more completely covered in stitches, the better.

Two babies later, I moved on to knitting and then to quilting and the stitching fell by the wayside, at least until I started seeing things like Hocuspocusville. With four kids stampeding through the house, embroidery is a lot easier to manage than counted cross stitch over 32 count linen.

As much as I love Hocuspocusville (and all of the other patterns from Crabapple Hill Studio that I've got in my to-stitch pile), I got distracted when I saw the Garden Party quilt in The Gentle Art of Stitching. That one used vintage embroidery cut into even squares. At the time, I couldn't get out to even look for embroidered pieces at estate sales so I did the sensible thing and started stitching my own.

This may be like a jigsaw puzzle without a solution, but I've been having a lot of fun raiding my mom's stash of tole painting patterns (because there were hot iron transfers in there) and finding others online. I'm in no hurry to finish...although it would be a good thing to get back to the witch's houses....

And I got a gorgeous cross-stitch kit for Christmas last year that's calling to me.