As I was sitting there yesterday, debating when to take some finished pieces in to the framer, I realized I never made my grandson his needlpoint monogram. This is something I've done for some of his second cousins, but I never came up with a good "frame" for MY little one's monogram. I finally played around enough with my design to come up with something I liked.
I found a font I liked, blew it up to a ridiculous size and transferred it to a grid. After playing around with some designs on Excel, I finally got the pencils out and started working on a stitch for the frame. I think I got it, but I never know until I start putting the actual threads together. I think I have decided on a blue and red design, but it may change to a more monochromatic blue or a wilder color scheme with some electric colors, but we will see. Since we decorated the nursery at our house in a neutral green and beige for any granchild to enjoy whether boy or girl, I don't have a real color scheme to work off of like I did for the cousins pieces. Here is a picture of Cousin Pearce's design. Of course, her room is soft pink and beige.
I used Vineyard silk for the initial in the center and its background and Splendor for the stitched frame. I used pearl beads and silk ribbons in the corners. It was so much fun to do something girly. It has been the only girly one so far, boys seem to be the norm in our family. Her brother Remy has a nice soft blue and tan tartan design to match his room.
These pieces have been a blend of my passions in life. My degree is in interior design, so designing a monogram for a specific room doesn't bother me in the least. The design usually does take a bunch of thought and hours of looking at threads, but I enjoy those activities for what they are. I never put too much money into it, and the small size means that the hours stitching it are kept to a rational amount. Enough to show I care, but not so much that if it doesn't hang in a house for fifty years, I'm going to take someone out of the will. Also, knowing the personality of mom and taking that into consideration usually ensures that a design will be appropriately loved. One thing about a monogram, it's a lot easier than stitching a stocking!! Can you imagine doing that for your nieces' and nephews' children? Oh my! Yes, only my children and my grandchildren are stocking worthy! Daughter-in-laws do get a cuff, but it requires a direct bloodline for a full-blown stitched stocking. My siblings and my husbands siblings are on their own in that department no matter how much they oooh and aaah over our stockings.
I look forward to starting Brayden's monogram. Even with my thought process already in the works and something down on paper, it will probably be a couple of months before I'm ready to put in the first stitch. I'll have to mull it all over for a while, tweak a few things in the stitch plan, and mull it over again, look at threads, tweak the stitch plan again, and look at threads again. Well, until that design process is finished, off to work on Tony's Slava for a while.
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