Hollybee Makes Stuff: A Secret Project: REVEALED!

I have a funny habit of making surprise presents for friends and family as gifts. Now you might not think this habit is so funny, but it tends to mess up my blog-posting schedule since I don't want to post anything online about it until the recipient has had a chance to receive and enjoy their gift.

But now the suspense is over! The gifts are given and I get to reveal all the secret projects. This post will be all about my brother's birthday present, so stay tuned for the next post where I reveal my other secret project.

Back in May, 2009, I was trying to decide what to give my brother Eric for his birthday. After much flip-flopping and wishy-washing, I came up with the great idea of making him a needlepoint pillow since I just happened to have a piece of cross-stitch cloth lying around, and oodles of embroidery thread doing nothing but entangling itself slowly.

I hate using cross-stitch patterns since I always lose count, and I usually get "writers' block" when trying to come up with an original design, so it wasn't long before I decided upon the image to stitch: a free-styled replica of the painting he had made for me the previous Christmas. Here's a picture, taken by his fiance Susan, of the painting in progress:

And here I am, enjoying the completed work on Christmas day, 2008. The painting flew back to Louisiana with me the next day, and it sat propped up on my piano from whence it inspired me in May to cross-stitch the pillow.

Now I know what you're thinking: "But Holly, if you were making it for your brother's birthday in May 2009, why haven't you posted it yet?" The unfortunate answer to that is as follows. I began the project a week before Eric's birthday. By the time his birthday had arrived on May 25th, I had been forced to realize that his present would be late. And not just weeks late, butmonths late. This was going to take a very long time.

So over the next 10 months I stitched and stitched and stitched (and occasionally paused for other, significantly shorter projects as you have seen). Countless movies and television shows flew by as I added row upon row, and color upon color.

In March, 2010 I was nearly finished. During a lull in drilling, I completed the stitching during my last hitch offshore, and was excited to come home and finish it for good.

I trimmed the edges and sewed a velveteen backing of dark burgundy that I happened to have some extra of from a random Halloween costume from 2008. I soon realized I had to make a trip to the fabric store for two reasons: A. The pillow would look ridiculous without some sort of edging, and B. I had no stuffing to make it pillow-y.

So I bought piping and polyfill, and returned home eager to finish it. The piping turned out to be a good fit, although I had been worried it would be too bulky. There wasn't much of a selection at the store, and I'd already bitten off far enough to chew with this project that I wasn't going tomake my own piping. For goodness' sake! I bought a yard of piping, thinking that to be plenty. I was one lucky idiot, however, for I hadn't measured the pillow's picture and the one yard of piping turned out to be just barely enough.

My trusty Janome sewing machine barely got through the multiple layers of thick material, but after a bunch of false starts, a few unfortunate arrangement mistakes on my part, and a broken needle or two, I finally had the thing pieced together.

I stuffed the darn thing and hand-sewed the hole closed. I used fabric glue to close the ends of the piping, which were prone to some nasty unraveling. I considered hiding it with a bow of a similar color, but I eventually decided the disguise unnecessary and the embellishment overmuch. It wasn't the neatest finish, but I hope it gives it a little "handmade character" rather than detracting from the quality of the cross-stitch work.

Overall I am terribly proud of the final result. This was my first ever freestyle cross-stitch, and I was thrilled with how true to the original image it turned out.