Friday Finishes #8: 1 Corinthians

Now it’s time for one of my favorite Friday Finishes! There’s not much of an introduction for this one, so let’s dive right in!

Name of Piece: #187-0301 Love Is Patient (taken from 1 Corinthians)

Designed by: (c) 2003 Licensed From Current USA Inc. (No kidding, that’s who it says it’s designed by.)

Distributed as a kit by Janlynn under their Stamped Cross Stitch series.

Kit Contains: screen-printed fabric, 6-strand cotton floss, needle, floss card, graph, and instructions.

Finished Size: 12 in by 10 in

The Story: Funnily enough, I can’t remember where I bought this from. I think it must have been from Joann’s, as I see it there all the time, but this piece is right between all of my Hobby Lobby kit buys… but I think that’s because of how long it took me to finish this piece! I remember getting this because I wanted to do a project for my boyfriend for Valentine’s Day, our second Valentine’s day together. But I had to pick and choose between several kits that weren’t really what I was looking for. This is the piece I settled on.

It was an enormous project (I have never done one as large before or since, even though I have several in my stash I plan to do at one point, including my Cat BAP) but I figured if I worked at it I’d have it done in the four months between when I bought it and Valentine’s Day. Of course, since it was for my boyfriend, I had to hide it from him: I developed a system where I would hide it under Queenie to where it couldn’t be seen. (Boy, does that put this piece in perspective! As Queenie was finish #4 and this is #9.)

Time To Complete: Like six or seven months? Possibly eight. A very long time.

Review: Well… I had a very interesting time with this piece. It was my first stamped cross stitch, and for the lettering, I found it to be fantastic. Considering three-fourths of the piece is all back-stitch, I got my back-stitch skills in hardcore. This is also the project I really learned to do french knots on, because there are a ton of those as well. I’d guess around 50 or so total. The first few didn’t work out so well but I quickly mastered the ability to do them. (This is why it always surprises me that a majority of stitchers can’t or won’t do french knots.)

I missed a couple colors, like I did violet instead of blue or blue instead of red, but considering the amount of times the colors change in the piece itself you can’t really tell that a color switch was a mistake. I’m not sure looking at the piece now that I like the frequent color change, but I enjoyed it at the time.

The worst part of this project for me was the actual cross-stitch itself. It was miserable going. I couldn’t get any of the crosses to line up straight following the lines on the fabric; to me they all looked wonky and out of place against the perfect crosses on aida. I hated the look of it, and as I’d saved it for the last part the last month working on the project was pretty miserable.

I pushed through, but I swore I never wanted to do stamped cross-stitch again, unless it was a project like this where the majority of the piece was back-stitch. (I am of course doing a set of pillow cases as a stamped piece, and that one is faring much better.)

It ended up taking me much longer than four months to complete the project. I tried to have it done by Valentine’s Day, which was a couple of weeks after our 18-month anniversary, but it ended up taking a few extra months for me to finish up the cross-stitch and back-stitch on the design. My boyfriend loved it all the same (a happy coincidence, 1 Corinthians is one of his favorite verses) and it hung in his bedroom until we moved into our first apartment!

Final Verdict: This is a somewhat difficult piece to start out with if you’ve never done a stamped cross-stitch design before, but it definitely improves your skills in back-stitch and french knots! If you’d like a colorful project to give to your sweetheart, this is a great one for it!

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?  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.