Well, in all fairness to Jordan, I really need to share a new note that she wrote that puts Jordan in perspective. She really is a sweet child with a wonderful disposition. Jordan has a great heart, she wants to help everyone around her, and she shares her love and her hugs with anyone who is in her reach.
I have been working on my cross-stitching. My collection of patterns "to-do" is quite extensive and it keeps growing as I find new things that I like. One of the new patterns that I fell in love with was The Alphabet Fairies by Nora Corbett. Nora is a very talented artist whose work is turned into cross-stitch patterns. She is always a very sweet woman, and I have enjoyed getting to (virtually) meet her. I chose the first letter of the girls' names, and bought the floss to get started since it was not my usual floss, but specific hand-dyed floss which cost a LOT more money.
My next step was to agonize over the fabric. The suggested fabric was linen, and I bought it to try, but I hated it. I could not stitch on it at all. This was as far as I got:
The stitches were not even, nothing was lining up as it should, and I was spending more time ripping out stitches than I was actually stitching. Well, there was no way that I was going to continue, and I was totally burned on stitching the piece at all. Unfortunately, the girls had seen the patterns and knew they were for them, so I was disappointing them which was killing me. So, I found another lady on a Facebook stitching group would loved working on linen, and I sent her the Jordan Fairy so she could finish her, and I decided I would do some other projects and then try again.
I did get through some other projects, and I made sure that I worked on other fabrics called evenweave: Lugana and Jobelan. That way, I wasn't using the Aida that I was used to, I was getting the smoother look of linen, but I wasn't working on linen either.
So, I spent a couple months trying to decide on the perfect fabric for the new Fairies. I wanted to be sure that I could use the same fabric for each of the three fairies so the girls would have that in common, but then have different mats and frames. I finally decided on Stephanie Bishop's hand-dyed fabric of Spring Breeze in a 28 ct Lugana. She made three pieces for me, so I knew they would be as similar as possible, and I re-started Jordan.
Well, the fact that this pattern has the exact same name as Jordan was something that she just couldn't miss. As I started stitching, Jordan kept checking my progress, and when she saw that I put in the last full stitch, she was completely excited and started squealing, "At last! My fairy is done!" I had to explain that I still had backstitching and beading to do, so it wasn't done yet, but Jordan was too excited to care.
I stopped stitching the other night after I put in the last full stitch and just looked at what I had done. It was 64 hours of stitching involved in this piece, and I was such a delight to stitch!! I'm a bit daunted by the amount of beading that is going to take place, and I was hoping and praying that the backstitching would be fine - no areas where things didn't line up.
When I went back into my office to get the beads and Kreinik floss, I found this note sitting on my desk. I hate that she wrote it in yellow crayon because it is so difficult to read, but Jordan said that yellow means "happy" so she HAD to use yellow.
My heart melted when I read the note. How incredibly sweet!!! This same child who will drive me insane because her logic and reasoning skills are over-developed understood that this was a lot of time spent on something for her, and she wanted to show me her appreciation.
I was really glad that I had decided to stop stitching that night. This note was far too cute, and it really touched my heart. It also helped to get me motivated to get the rest of it done. I have no intention of sending it in for framing until all three are done since I decided that I wanted the same frames as well for each girl.
Last night, I was able to get the backstitching done, and I was the one squealing with joy because everything lined up just as it was supposed to! Now, to take on some beading and the Kreinik....
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