Oldies Revisited

Did you know that this coming March will be my 10th anniversary as a Cross Stitch Designer? I started out so small, dear reader... selling charts one at a time. No distributors, no shops, just me, my computer, and a few dozen ebay followers.

The past nine years have been a slow and steady climb, and I'm often amazed that I'm still doing this thing that I love. I try to not play the comparison game, but it's a bit hard for me to believe that you all want to buy my designs when there are SO MANY amazing and beautiful and beyond-me creations from other designers that you could be stitching instead.

Some of you have been with me from the very beginning, and to you I have the biggest, most heartfelt amount of thankfulness; you have supported me and encouraged me and really and truly are the reason I began designing in the first place.

I've been thinking that, in light of the pending 10th anniversary, I should highlight some of my older designs for those of you that have learned of my existence at some point along the way.

I'm going to start with my very first: Grapevines at the Old Homestead.

To this day, this is the Farmboy's very favorite of my designs.  He has made me swear several times that I will never ever even THINK about selling the model. I think he wants to be buried with it.

This sampler was designed “on-the-fly” back in the days before I had software that made my job much easier. I had a frame that I loved, an old sampler quote that I loved, and I really wanted to work in the grapevines somehow, since we were in the process of adding a new grape arbor to our yard. I picked the colors, started stitching, and it all came together in a way that I was happy with.

For those of you that don't have a needlework shop nearby, I promise you that every single one of my designs will always be available for sale in my etsy shop, including this chart.

Although many of my older designs have been discontinued by one or more of my distributors, there's a good chance they will still be available through one of them, so put in your request with your local needlework shop owner to get it ordered for you. You can currently get my designs through the distributors listed in the side bar to the left of this post. Your local shop owner can also come directly to me to order any of my designs; I gladly sell wholesale directly to established shops.