Cheri Blum | ||||||||||||||
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I saw this kit advertised in The Stitchery catalog. I fell in love with the rose, the background, the colors. They would look just right in the new look I had envisioned for my living room. So my dear husband bought the kit — complete with the mat and frame — as a gift for me. When I looked at the catalog, I hadn't realized that this was an embellished cross-stitch kit. That means that the image of the rose and the background was already printed on the aida fabric. As a stitcher, all you do is use one strand of floss to do some cross-stitch and half-cross stitch on top of the printing. I started it, but was just out-of-sorts every time I worked on it. The embellishment barely seemed to show. I just didn't "get it." Why add floss to a piece if it barely makes a difference? So I put this piece aside for months at a time. I would pick it up now and then. I even made a goal to complete it by Dec. 31, 2005. But nothing could get me motivated to work on it. Finally, early in 2006, my husband and I had a long talk about redecorating the living room / dining room area of our home. After years of planning, it was really going to happen. That seemed to be enough motivation for me to finish this piece.
Now that the piece is finished and framed, I find I like it more and more. The rose is growing in me! The embellishments add just a touch of color and depth and shine to the printed aida. It's really quite pretty! Still, I don't think I want to stitch another embellished cross-stitch piece. At the time of this writing, the carpet is all pulled up. The new flooring has been ordered. Our wrought iron stair railing has been pulled out. And my brother-in-law is building us a half-wall where the stair railing used to be. I hear him screwing in the dry wall right now! When our rooms are redecorated, Cheri Blum will have a place of honor in the dining room. My mother-in-law is even going to make a companion piece for it in the form of an oil painting!
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