Mike Powell

This year I have rediscovered the joy of cross stitching. In the 1980s and 1990s I completed a considerable amount of cross stitch projects and have many of them hanging on my walls. I was originally introduced to the craft in about 1983 by a young lady friend who was always working on some stitching. I expressed a slight interest in what she was doing and the next thing I know she gifted me with some fabric, floss, patterns, and material. I quickly became hooked.

Over time, though, my life became busy and for almost two decades I stopped stitching. Two ladies at my church work at a wonderful local needlework shop called In Stitches Needlework that I first visited during the pandemic at their invitation. I bought a few new patterns, but did not really start getting back to stitching until earlier this year when I began to attend a twice monthly stitching session at the store. Stitchers of all skill levels sit around and work on individual projects and talk about a wide variety of topics—it is a wonderful community of people who provide me with lots of inspiration and encouragement.

The first photo shows my progress on my current big project, a pattern by Ink Circles called Reflections of Paris. This monochromatic piece includes a number of familiar Paris landmarks. I am about a third of the way through it right now (and already gone through two entire skeins of DMC floss). As you can probably tell, the motifs are repeated four times from the center, which is the square shown near the bottom of the image. As you look down the right and left edges, for example, you can start to see emerging portions of the same shapes that are visible along the top edge. I will be working on this patterns, which calls for 6944 stitches, for quite a while, but I find it to be really relaxing, so I look forward to doing a little stitching each day, if possible.

The second image shows a piece called Country Welcome that I stitched this spring. It was a pattern from the August 1990 issue of Leisure Arts, The Magazine. I used to subscribe to a number of different cross stitch magazines and have held on to the old issues. I tend to like cross stitch patterns that have a minimal color palette.

The final image shows another project that I completed this spring called “Do Everything in Love.” It was a free, but copyrighted, pattern by Silver Creek Samplers that I picked up at my local cross stitch store while checking out one day.

I realize that this posting is quite a change from my normal wildlife photos, but I thought it would be fun to share this other side of me with you all. On some of the days this summer when the weather and humidity make it tough to venture out with my camera, I know I can curl and stitch away in the comfort of my air-conditioned house.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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