Modern Crafts
As a child, art class was always my favorite. You can never be wrong, no matter how good or not so good you are at it. Being a graphic designer by day and a crafter by night keeps my brain in a creative state. I personally enjoy taking old school crafts and adding a modern twist to them. I feel, with the hustle and bustle of the world today and having everything so readily available, it is relevant to take the time and learn the patience that comes with completing a project that takes a significant amount of time. Possibly learning a little bit about yourself along the way. I want to keep some of these skills alive and creating some pretty cool artwork that I will be able to pass down to future generations.
Let’s talk about these skills. Some are easy to learn and others require lots of patience and with a few screw-ups to conquer along the way. There may have been a few nights sitting on the couch with a huge ball of yarn that had become so entangled that I decided it is better to toss and admit defeat than to lose my mind over the hours it would take to try to untangle the horrible mess. I can handle the $5 loss to save my sanity! I’ve also experienced cutting fabric slightly too short a few times because I forgot to factor in the seam allowance. This required that I remember to cut the rest of my pattern too short to save the work I currently had invested into the project. All of those headaches just because math was never my strong suit! But, I guarantee once you finish one of these projects, it becomes an addiction. The gratification you get from these projects when it comes time to show it off to everyone is intoxicating and extremely exhilarating.
Now for my current project, a series of Alice in Wonderland themed cross stitch patterns. Being very tedious and extremely time consuming, I currently have been working on this particular series for about a year and a half and I have only completed two of the five patterns. Alice is the last one I completed taking about a year’s time. I had to re-start Alice after being about 45 hours into the project. I realized that the creator of the pattern did not have their dimensions correct and I had unfortunately cut my cloth too short for the pattern to fit. Talk about testing one’s patience! It had been sitting on my end table for about two weeks staring at me, crushing me little-by-little every time I looked at it! Not wanting to admit defeat, my husband finally threw it away encouraging me to move forward. After restarting Alice, and having my patience tested for a year, I was finally able to say that I finished! It ended up being well over 300 hours and about 70,000 handmade stitches.
I want to encourage everyone to find their inner Mad Hatter and start creating! Once you have finally finished that long drawn out project, the pride you receive from making something by hand is definitely something to write home about.