Friday Finishes #11: Love Bug 2012
The finished piece.
Finally! Months after the first article, we finally get to the Friday Finishes article that’s an updated version of my second finish, the Love Bug!
Name of Piece: Item #021-1199 Love Bug (Love Bug 2012)
Designed by: The kit doesn’t say, but I have a feeling that they both might have been designed by the same person.
Distributed as a kit by Janlynn Company under their Design for the Needle series.
Kit Contains: 18-count cotton aida, 6 strands floss, needle, graph and instructions, self-adhesive mounting board, and frame.
Finished Size: 2.5 inches round
The Story: This is one of the many kits I picked up on my return trips to Hobby Lobby after my first time. As I said in the Love Bug article, it was the second project I ever completed at around 11 years old. The original kit I did has been out of print for years, so imagine my surprise when I’m browsing through the kit wall at Hobby Lobby and found this! It’s a complete redesign from the original – the lettering and the lady bug itself are both different – but it’s called the same thing and uses the same basic motifs so I was happy to have found it. It became the first in my Mini Kits Series, where I stitched a bunch of small kits all in a row.
Time To Complete: I want to say two days? It was short but I can’t quite remember the exact time frame.
Review:
The finished piece.
To start off with I’m going to compare the 2006 version with the 2012 version.
I don’t like this ladybug as much as the first. They’ve added more details to it: the antennas end in a stitch, there’s back-stitch around the body, and they’ve added legs, but I liked the simple lady bug better. Both designs have pros and cons but as a whole I like the original a little bit more than the updated version.
I definitely like the lettering on the original better than the updated version, by far. The thick, curvy letters look better to me than the spindly letters used in the update. The flower was a nice addition to try and cover the space between the words I guess but I feel like the better option would’ve been to move the lady bug either up or down a smidge to add in the original letters. I just like the original letters better.
Final Verdict: In terms of stitching this project, though, it was an easy and simple project to do. The kit is more complex than the original so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to a beginner like I would the original, but it’s not so much higher in complexity that it’d be a huge learning curve. Just smaller stitches and more back-stitch.
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.