This beautiful Rose of Love cross-stitch is definitely a project that I completed in fits and starts. The pattern is from a book of “quick and easy” cross-stitch patterns for greeting cards loaned to me by a friend of mine. Can I just point out that “quick and easy” is most definitely a RELATIVE term.
I started stitching in the centre (as you do) and straight away encountered a bit of a challenge. When stitching the first colour of the rose (I began with the lightest pink) it was very difficult to keep an accurate count of where I was. The stitches follow a broken, uneven spiral sort of shape. As I had no other stitches in place yet and hadn’t put in guide-lines, I found myself constantly going one square too far, or not far enough. Toward the end of that first colour I felt as if I had undone every single stitch at least once in my efforts to be accurate to the pattern. It drove me bloody bonkers.
I would just like to point out that I’m not completely silly though. I am fully aware that there are several things I could have done differently which could have potentially made my life easier. So here are the answers to the questions I know you’re just dying to know:
Why didn’t you stitch in guide-lines?
Well. I have a degree in mathematics and I’m a bit OCD when it comes to numbers and symmetry. I knew that if I put in guidelines I would be constantly recounting and double-checking that they were in the right place. I know I wouldn’t be able to trust myself and all that second-guessing would not encourage a positive attitude to my work.
Why didn’t you just stitch all of the colours in one petal at a time?
The long and the short of it is that I hate starting and finishing threads. It irks me something wicked.
Why didn’t you just count more carefully in the first place?
I tried. I truly did. The stitches were very small. It was HARD.
Once the first colour was in I progressed to the next shade of pink and everything went swimmingly until the flower was complete. At this point I felt as if I had the majority of the project complete so I figured it wouldn’t matter if I took a small break. Nearly a month later I got around to stitching the leaves. A few weeks after that I got the border completed. All that was left now was the backstitch and the dreaded French knots. Sigh.
I attempted to delay the inevitable for as long as possible. I put in all of the backstitch around the rose and even did the vines around the border. In hindsight this was a rather silly idea as I ended up wasting a lot of thread having to put in the French knots separately. A friend gave me a link to a great blog article about how to create French knots and after many failed attempts I finally had a product I wasn’t completely disappointed with.
With that the Rose of Love was finished. I haven’t framed it yet. I’m on the lookout for a nice square frame that will fit and then I thought I might try my hand at some lacing.
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