Sewing: Cross Stitch Revival

I've done quite a bit of embroidery during high school days, and still do on and off. Between kids, cooking (a passion of mine), gardening (in summer only), laundry/dishes/cleaning chores, and office work (not to mention commute to/fro), dropping-off/picking-up kids from school, doing some arts/crafts activities with the kids at home plus reading awesome books with/to them and such, needlework takes a backseat, naturally, as it seems frivolous (as opposed to utilitarian, in my mind at least).

Crochet is a different matter altogether. I find it Zen-like once I get started and know the pattern I am making, which is usually baby things like layette sets and hats and booties and sweaters and such. I find it so much easier to make up patterns and fix mistakes along the way with crochet. Knitting seems more rigid and unforgiving that way, although I do like knitting and have done sweaters and such on and off. Knitting almost feels like cross-stitch to me for some reason, while crochet makes me feel free, much like when I do hand-embroidery.

Where am I going with all this rambling? Well, during summer, when I visited my mom who is somewhat of an awesome cross-stitch expert, my interest in cross-stitch was rekindled and I ended up making a few designs.

I don't have the patience for cross-stitch, I must admit. It always seems a bit time-consuming (and annoying) to count and recount and change threads and count again and follow the graph to get the design just so.

But, the finished work certainly is lovely so I decided to make a few that I can use as patchwork in Ana's clothes at some point in the future. Nothing breath-taking or fancy, just a few designs that Ana picked out.

The border design in the picture am thinking can be a border for a nice elegant white tops. The bird was something Ana wanted on her jeans, so I'll just sew it on as a patch. The cherries are for her placemat, she wants another pair of cherries like that for a matching napkin to go with the placemat.

For cherries and leaves and such, I prefer the variegated embroidery floss as the coloring of the threads make for unique pieces even if I am making the same cherries over and over. So, there it is, another little project done in July/August this year, thanks to my mom.