Objects in the rearview mirror...

I remember learning to cross stitch during a road trip in the back seat of my grandparent's station wagon.  I had a green plastic hoop, a strip of aida ribbon, and some pink and red DMC floss.  My grandma Ruth let me use her cool folding scissors to snip the loose threads and helped me to untangle my work when I managed to sew it onto the hoop.  I think I was about seven.

Stitched when I was seven

Since then I have tackled quite a few projects, everything from little Christmas ornaments that were finished in a few hours to a guardian angel picture that took several years to complete.  I have always loved the idea of using a rectilinear grid to create forms that read as curves and swirls.  However, as my taste for design developed, I found fewer and fewer patterns that I liked.

At ten or so I made my first attempt at designing a cross stitch pattern by drawing on graph paper and using each grid as a stitch.  I drew an apple tree in a bright green field and a little girl riding on a rope swing that was tied to one of the branches. There was a rainbow overhead, puffy white clouds in the sky and purple mountains receding into the distance. I was far to ambitious, and I didn't make it very far on my stitching attempt. Plus, I was ten -- what did I know?

So, now that I am older and wiser (I hope), I am once again trying my hand at cross stitch design. I still love rainbows, but I've also learned to love letters, and the way that a font can lend meaning and emotion to the words it is representing.  I love words, for after all, we need words to make us human.  I love the way lines and shapes can interact in a composition, and I love the feelings that an archetypal image can evoke.  I have so many ideas to explore that it is hard to know where to begin.

Well, I guess there's nothing to it but to do it!  To be continued... :)