Friday Finishes #3: Queenie

Today’s Friday Finishes moves on from my beginner days straight into six years later. Yes, it took me six years from my Love Bug finish to finish another cross-stitch project. What can I say, I was young and easily distracted by the Internet.

Name of Piece: Queenie

Designed by: The kit does not say, it’s a hit or miss on whether Janlynn lists the designer on their kits.

Distributed as a kit by the Janlynn Company, under their “Designs for the Needle” series.

Kits Contains: 14 ct. Aida, floss, needle, chart, and instructions.

Finished Size: 5″ x 7″ or 12,7 x 17,8 cm

The Story: I have a bad habit of being a chronic kit-buyer. I love kits more than charts by a mile, mainly because everything is already supplied to me and I don’t have to hunt everything down and cut the fabric and all that jazz, but I have a bad tendency of buying up kits whenever I find them, especially when they are on sale. As you can see, this particular kit was 50% off and I could not let it go for that price. I bought this not long after I got back into stitching and I didn’t have many other kits, so I believe I started in on this one almost immediately. I had a 7 inch hoop it fit beautifully in (as it so happens it’s my only one and I need more) and I even took a progress picture of it, which is rare for me to do, and was a non-existent habit prior to this project.

Time to Complete: Around one month (after stitching all that white on the body I got to the pillow and dragged for ages)

Review: Janlynn is one of my favorite companies to buy kits from, and this kit did not disappoint. The floss was already sorted and carded which was nice, I have another Janlynn piece that was not pre-sorted and trying to figure out the different colors is a complete nightmare because they’re all so similar. I found that the kit was harder to do because of the white thread on white aida. I normally wait and do all of my white at the end because I have such a hard time seeing it unless surrounded by other colors, but the white was the majority of the project so I couldn’t avoid it. The backstitch was clearly marked on the chart and it was actually fun to do, because the cat really came to life once you began adding the back-stitched details. Despite all that white on white action I think I only made a few mistakes on the entire piece which I was easily able to correct (that’s why the eyes and nose are already stitched on the WIP picture, I miscounted the empty spots and had to stitch over the white before I forgot to do it and got lost later).

You will notice a glaring difference between the finished piece and the picture from the kit all the way up there at the top. Yes, the actual text saying “Queenie” is missing. That was my choice, albeit an accidental one. You see I had already been working on the kit for a month, and when I finally had the last push to finish the cushion and do the backstitch, I was so excited to be able to move on to another piece that I completely forgot about the text at the top! By the time I realized it was missing I had already washed, ironed, and framed (myself as you can probably tell) the piece and it was too late to try and add it in. I think it looks better this way anyway, don’t you?

Final Verdict: I loved the piece, I loved working on it, and I think it turned out great! I would definitely recommend this kit to other cat lovers. 🙂

Have you done this kit before? How did it go for you? How did you like it, or not like it, as the case may be? Did you remember the text? Leave a comment below or head on over to our Facebook page and tell us how it went!

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Friday Finishes is a segment where I catalog and review all the cross-stitch pieces I have ever completed. Some of the pieces I no longer have information on, or I don’t have pictures because I gave away the piece as a gift and forgot to take a picture, but I’ll do my best to be as informative as possible! Check back on Fridays for more.