Our church has done something unique to show that we are a community and a family. On one wall of the sanctuary there is a “quilt” that they have assembled where each square represents a family in the parish. It’s more of a wall hanging, but they refer to it as a quilt because they sew all of the squares together to give it that quilt look. When a new family (such as me and Jay) join you are given a square piece of felt and asked to personalize it so that they can add it to the quilt. I have to admit that I’ve had our square since January or February, but I just haven’t had a whole lot of time to work on it.

I knew that I wanted to cross stitch on it, but I had to find a pattern that would fit within the confines of the square and leave enough of a selvage for them to attach it to the existing quilt. Not only that, but I really wanted something that would represent Jay and me. That was harder than you would think. I didn’t want anything cutesy or generic. When you look at it I wanted you to instantly think of us. Luckily, I found a pattern that worked.

This isn’t a good picture, but it was the best that I could get. It’s in one of my old issues of Stoney Creek magazine. I believe that it was to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s last flight (I don’t have the magazine sitting here beside me to tell you for sure, and I can almost guess that it doesn’t matter a whole lot to you). You can kind of see her blurry name in the middle bottom of the picture with the dates of her birth and disappearance (I think) on either side. I plan on putting our last name where Amelia’s name currently resides, and then Jay and Kerry on either side of it instead of the dates.

The important thing for me regarding this picture is the fact that it has a somewhat realistic-looking airplane. After all, how could I better represent my dearest husband? Somebody asked me, “But that doesn’t represent you, it just represents Jay.” Not true. It’s done in cross stitch with my own editing done to the pattern. It’s the best way to represent me. Plus, my name will be on it. lol

As you can see, I haven’t managed to get a lot accomplished on this. With all of the other projects and stuff that we have going on it doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for stitching. Not only that, but I haven’t really found a good place for me to sit and stitch. I might ask for a specific kind of floor lamp to put at the end of the couch just for this purpose. We’ll have to see. Oh, and if you don’t know much about cross stitch you might be concerned about the blue horizontal lines. Because the square was felt and I am doing a counted cross stitched pattern I had to baste a piece of waste canvas onto the felt so that I can stitch my pattern. Once I am all done I will have to do some tedious work to remove the waste canvas, but I’m hoping that the final look will be well worth it.

If you’ve followed my blog you might be wondering about the last piece of cross stitch that I was working on, my A-10 Warthog. Well, that one has been set aside until the square is done. I need to get this back to the church so it has priority. Don’t worry. I fully intend on finishing the Warthog! I will frame it and place it in Jay’s workshop. And I’ve figured out a way to make people laugh when they see that it looks like a blurry jet… I’m going to say that it’s my view without my glasses! 🙂