The next night, I looked at the kit again and thought, what did I do wrong? I took it back out and looked at the directions again and saw it...(you professional cross stitchers out there will laugh at this, but remember, I had never done this), but I saw it! Those NUMBERS (1), (2), etc, were telling me how many individual threads were supposed to be used to indicate the thickness of the thread color! Dope me the first time put all six strands in which was way too thick! No wonder it was hard to thread my first time and the needle broke. So now, determined to succeed, I flipped the piece over and started again all over at the other corner and was on my way.
Over the next few nights, I began doing anywhere between 30-60 minutes every single night on this piece. And I made A LOT of mistakes, and still almost thought about giving up many times. It was humbling to work so hard and for so long to feel like I was making so little progress in comparison to the whole picture. But it also occurred to me that the struggles I was facing in the piece, had a strange metaphor to what was going on in my life at the time. I had just recently been asked to cover someone else’s job while they were on maternity leave, a job not only I had never done before, knew very little about, did not have the correct resources/clearances to do said job, had no training to do job, no preparation, and we had just gone live with a software that this job was right in the middle of it all. Oh, and I was in my own first trimester with Abby and nauseous, VERY nauseous, every single day. Needless to say, life was kind of a stressful mess! But as I sat there at night working on my piece, I felt that even though it felt I was making little progress in comparison to the entire huge piece that seemed like it would never get done, I could get one stitch done at a time. If I could make one stitch, that was one more stitch that I had the day prior and I would slowly make progress. And it hit me, that’s all I could do at my job to stay sane. If I could at least show up and get a little done each day, without stressing myself out about the "entire piece" then I could manage that. If I could figure out how to correct my mistakes and set backs in my cross stitch, then I could figure out how to move past challenges and set backs in my job, too. The stitch also provided a way for me to spend time at night not thinking about work and just relaxing throughout the pregnancy.
I continued on, every night, and my job began to let up. The person came back from leave and I finished that "duty", but then got asked to cover someone else’s maternity leave that had a similar job. Luckily I at least knew more about that persons job role and had prior experience in it, so I was a lot less stressed. I began to feel that as Abby was growing bigger in the womb, she was connected to the cross stitch as they began to grow together. We sat for hours on weeknights and weekends together, feeling her kick and getting through the nausea, migraines, etc, together, as we worked on the piece. It felt so good to see progress as I was starting to make out actual shapes, i.e. I made a tree! A fence! A shed! It’s actually looks like something! Each stitch I had worked so hard for, it was beginning to look like something!
But of course there were set backs. Not only hundreds of mistakes (I am still SO confused as to how I could possibly so diligently follow the pattern and yet was constantly running into errors!) but then there was the BIG set back. I was about to go on a work trip. I was packing for the trip and wanted to bring my cross stitch as something to do when I was alone in the hotel room at night, probably nauseous. I put it INSIDE my suitcase on top of all my stuff, I closed the lid but I hadn’t zippered the suitcase yet as I intended to still put a few last minute things in. I had a late day flight and that morning decided to take a nap before having to go to the airport. Well, right as I went in to go collect my suitcase before final preparations to leave for the airport, there my piece was, on the floor, shredded!!! My DOG, my sweet angel but PSYCHO dog who thinks she is a GOAT with how attracted to paper she is, had completely torn up my pattern. I sat down in tears after yelling at the dog and picked up my piece, which I thought was a complete goner. LUCKILY she SOMEHOW must not have been able to eat the piece itself and was just interested in the paper pattern sheet, which was now officially in shreds! So I still had my piece. I ordered a whole new kit on Amazon so that I could get a new pattern sheet. I had to sit there and cross out all the stitches I had already done and probably lost a good 2 weeks on the process. But, like other challenges, we persevered.
Then a complete new development happened. I was regularly posting updates on my piece on facebook, and my aunt had noticed something very peculiar. She picked up that the piece actually was a picture of a place. It was the Mabry mill along the Blue Ridge parkway in Virginia. All this time I thought it was just a pretty picture. Then for my aunt to recognize it and it was a real place!? What became even more goosebumpy, was that turns out, according to my Aunt and seconded by other family members, turns out the Mabry Mill on the Blue Ridge Parkway was one of my grandmothers FAVORITE places to visit when traveling. This really struck on a heartstring for me, as my grandmother had passed away 7 years ago. So to have completely randomly picked a cross stitch piece on Amazon, persevere through all the challenges and continue on, and then to realize it was a picture of my grandmothers favorite place? It felt like more than a coincidence. As I continued stitching every night, it felt like not only was I doing it with Abby in the womb, but also with my grandmother watching over my shoulder, too.
Here is the Mabry Mill in real life:
As we counted down the days to our due date, I tried desperately to finish before she came. I had this fear that once a new mom when she was born, I would never have time to do stitching ever again. I feared I had come so far, so close to finishing, only to let it sit unfinished for the next 20 years til I could pick it up again. I didn’t want to let myself down, Abby down, my grandmother down.
But, It was unrealistic. I couldn’t finish before she came. So she came! And yes, the first month or so of Abby being here, I didn’t touch it. For multiple reasons. I was too tired. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to focus on it, I couldn’t focus on it. I didn’t want to get the whole thing out and start stitching only to have her cry and I would have to put the whole thing away again. I wouldn’t label it as post partum depression, but the first month or so post partum, the whole artistic side of me kind of felt shut down. Like mom-mode was so dominant during that time, the tiredness, it all took over and I couldn’t possibly think about doing anything related to art, or my stitch.
After a month or so, I still didn’t want to stitch. Like, I really didn’t want to. I resented it. I felt pressure now to do it, like getting a masters dissertation done after years of procrastination. Now it just felt like something I felt pressured to do, because it had meant so much to me before the birth. But deep inside me, way deep deep down, I knew the answer to it all was to try. I had to try to finish.
So, very similar to how I started back in January 2018, one stitch at a time, I resumed again just so, one stitch at a time. And it did something miraculous. One stitch at a time, each stitch started rebuilding that part of my brain, the artistic side, the me side. It started pulling me out of the post partum funk, reminding me of who I am and what I like to do, and that it was OKAY to work on fun things even with a baby. So on maternity leave, while she napped, I got about an hour or so each day to continue working on it. In December 2018 I FINALLY got it done!
And you know what? There are SOOOOO many mistakes. Like, so, so, so many. Probably over a hundred. And of course one mistake leads to others, naturally, as the pattern has to rework itself. It’s a miracle it turned out even looking like something at all. But, you know what else? To me, its another metaphor about it all. It felt like a metaphor for MY OWN SELF. The mistakes is what made it perfect, to me. It made it unique, technically it was like no other piece, even if they had the same pattern. It was it's own snow flake. And the fact that there were so many mistakes but still came out to be beautiful, gave me hope that in my life there are so many mistakes that have happened over the years but that is what makes me who I am today. And its all still so beautiful. Deep.
So I look at the finished piece today, framed and in my living room as a daily reminder that:
1. Life is all about getting one stitch done at a time.
2. Mistakes are what make life beautiful.
3. Each challenge might seem insurmountable but is indeed eventually possible to overcome in some way.
4. My grandmother is still always watching over me.
5. Art, any kind of art, can help pull a new mom back to herself. Art can do wonderful things for the brain!
I hope to get to visit the Mabry mill in person one day! Life is short. Life is fascinating. It is a small, weird strange world. And I love it.
This piece is for my grandmother. This piece is for Abby. This piece is for me.
Thank you for reading.
Here is the final piece:
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