Sew Political

My mom taught me how to cross stitch when I was really little. My first project was a teeny sampler that I was making for my grandmother. I got bored about halfway through (keep in mind there were only about 20 stitches) and my mom had to finish the rest. Thanks, Mom! In fact, I didn’t  really take up sewing again until I was a lot older. Oh, I took Home Ec and all that. My mom did those sewing projects, too. Thanks again, Mom!

However, once I crossed into that magical age of adulthood (or what people say is adulthood. I still don’t feel like an adult. I assume it will happen any day now) I realised that sewing could be fun. It was another way to express myself. And if there’s one thing I love, it’s expressing myself. I have worked on a lot of stamped cross stitch projects. I have pillowcases upon pillowcases that I’ve stitched but I was looking for something a little more unique. Something a little edgy. Something a little more me.

Enter the DIY sampler.

For those of you who know how to do counted cross stitch, this probably isn’t a revelation. And, also, can you teach me how to do counted cross stitch? I can’t get the hang of it. However, realising that I was not limited to patterns that I could only get pre stamped and pre designed by someone else was eye opening to me. I recently made a sampler that expressed a sentiment near and dear to my heart.

This was honestly one of my favorite projects to do because I had complete freedom. All choices were made by me. That’s a rarity in the adult world so I was delighted to embrace it.  Here is the ever helpful supply list:

*Fabric

The world is truly your oyster on this one. When I first started doing this, I used cut up pillowcases. However, I found the material to be a little too thin to work with. So I went to Michaels and happened upon some fabric in the clearance section. .  It had the thickness that I wanted and little gold flecks, which was an added bonus. Everything's better with a little pizzaz, right? Since my sampler was going to be on the small size, I didn’t need a lot of fabric. As with all craft projects, your milage may vary depending on what you want to achieve.

*Thread

Choose your colors and let your creativity fly! I went with two colors, one for the border and one for the lettering. You probably don’t want to overwhelm the sampler with too many colors, but a little pop never hurt anyone.

*Water Soluble Pen

This is one of the best craft items I’ve ever bought. It allows you to draw your pattern out on fabric so you have something to follow. The best part? Quick dunk in a bowl of water and no one will be the wiser. Claim you did it freehand! Go nuts!

Now, onto the show. By which I mean the steps necessary to complete this project.

Step One

Decide what you want to stitch and how big you want it to be. . Pretty basic, huh? Still, you need to build the pattern before you can create the art. Since I knew that I wanted to frame my sampler, I chose to go with a standard size. I traced a 4x6 photograph to use as a guide and drew my pattern inside of there, leaving some white space for the border.

Step Two

I started out by drawing my pattern in pencil, on a piece of plain white paper. This allowed me the freedom to play with the lines and correct my mistakes. And I made a lot of mistakes. It turns out that it’s not exactly easy drawing Xs that are evenly spaced and all the same size. As you can probably see from my final project, I didn’t have a 100% success rate but I did the best I could. And that involved a lot of erasing.

Once I had the pattern drawn in a way that I liked, I traced over the pencil with black marker. This was so I could see the pattern underneath the fabric when I went to draw it on. Yup, this project involves tracing. (Insert “Chasing Amy” joke here).

Step Three

This is where the tracing comes in.

(I told you there’d be Chasing Amy jokes)

Place the drawing underneath the fabric and trace the pattern onto the fabric. I've seen recommendations to do this on a window or over a lamp so the light really shows through, but I haven’t found that to be necessary. However, I  would recommend securing the paper onto a flat surface so you can concentrate on holding the fabric still. Drawing on fabric is not like drawing on paper.  Suffice it to say, I was glad that the pen was water soluble so no one could see what a disaster my initial attempts a straight line were.

Step Four

It’s sew on. Get it? Sew on? Like sewing, but also “so on”? Yeah, I’m a librarian not a comedian. Anyway, it’s time to start stitching. Follow your pattern, and your heart. Since you designed this pattern, you get to decide what stitches to use. I went with simple cross stitch and outline stitch, because that’s what I’m comfortable with. You may want to experiment with some other stitches.

Step Five

Finish. Frame. Or whatever. Your project is complete, go in peace. And do whatever you like with it. I framed mine and put it in my bedroom. It gives me a little burst of strength to see those words every day. I can’t wait to continue my homemade design career...hopefully with less misshapen Xs.

Do you have any tips or tricks? Did you try this? Let me know!