Perseverance Pays!

Morning All!

Thank you for all the comments about my finished Geisha and to those of you who joined the discussion on accents :D

Today is my mothers 60th birthday and I finally got to give her the Geisha - she was very pleased, phew!

She also got to see her own framed stitching......and this is where the perseverance comes in....and the story goes a little something like this....



On my mothers 40th birthday her best friend bought her a cross stitch kit. It was a design of a teddy bear collage. The kit consisted of a piece of Aida with a printed background, some unsorted skeins of thread (DMC) and a black an white chart. It was an expensive chart (20 years ago!) and was made by DMC, her friend purposely bought a make she expected to be of quality. She also told her that when she finished it she would get it framed for her.

After sorting all the threads (sometimes fun) my mum began stitching. The kit turned out to be the worst kit ever made and even now I am always wary about buying a kit. Although the Anchor Horses kit really impressed me, exceptional value for money (as I got it in a sale), two fabric options, simple and clear charts (with and without the back-stitch on) and good quality threads.

What was wrong with the DMC Teddy Bear Collage....the printed back ground only had partial roses and was blurry and unclear, the pattern was wrong and adjustments had to be continuously made along the way, and there weren't enough threads! Seriously it was a nightmare. Despite all this my mum persevered and ended up making up a lot of the pattern as she went along. She also decided to stitch the background due to the poor printed version.


The only thing was...she ended up putting it down a lot. She would pick it up to stitch, get frustrated and put it down. She never stitched consistently over the years, and is quite a leisurely stitcher, but every couple of years she would get it out and stitch for a few hours each night. She never started any other stitching projects in between either - how many of us have become annoyed and put something down and started something new?? Whats that? No-one! lol She really does have a lot of patience.

Anyway, 19 and a half years later and just before Christmas she finished it! She gave it to her friend who had it framed and my mum opened it this morning.

All I can say is "WOW" - I am so proud of her for persevering with it, never giving up and never getting distracted by other projects.  I have a picture too, so you can all see what a great job she has done on it. Its about 18" x 24"! The small flowers on the bows and on the brown bears (top right corner) sash are done using speciality stitches and the picture really doesn't do it any justice. I wish I could find it again online as I wanted to know if anyone else had issues with this kit. Let me know if you did?

On another note...I went to see the preview of 21 Jump Street last night and it was brilliant! If you like comedies this should be on your list. Hardly any of the jokes are given away in the trailer and they are pretty much non stop throughout. I think it was better than Hangover and Bridesmaids, but go and see it and let me know what you thought of it.

And on another note...My sister has been busy baking cupcakes for my mum to take to work, here's a pic of the ones I got to bring to work to share with my girlies :D

And on a final note....my stitching this week has not happened, I am still deciding, none of my other WIPs are grabbing my attention and I am on the lookout - recommendations gladly appreciated, otherwise what will I stitch for IHSW the weekend after this?

Hope you all have a great day!

Kate x