I’m here today to talk about mistakes. Other people have before and now it is my turn.
The picture at the top here is supposed to be a miniature of Degas’s Swaying Dancer, or Dancer in Green. I enjoy the feathery nature of Degas’s art and I’m rather a fan of classical art so when my friend showed me the miniature masterpieces in cross stitch I really enjoyed the idea and wanted to try it. (If you want to as well, I’ll put a link to the Etsy shop where I found mine at the bottom of the post.)
I’ve only done a few so far- Starry Night by Van Gogh, Water Lilies by Monet, and the above Dancer by Degas was to be my third. (I’ve cross stitched other stuff in between.) And yes, they’re all impressionist. I think those look really good in pixelated miniature. Interestingly, I think there have been some mistakes in all of them.
With Starry Night, I didn’t have a thread color they asked for so I went “close enough” but realized after that “close enough” in cross stitch threads should go by color and not by number. The numbers are… eh, I’d have to look up how they’re assigned and I don’t want to right now. Suffice to say the sky is a little greener in parts than it should have been. It still looks fine though.
With Water Lilies, I switched two colors on accident, putting a leaf-green where there should have been water-gray and vice versa. Well, it’s impressionist, and the flowers were fine so they got the idea across. In other words, it still looks fine.
With this one, I didn’t realize my mistake until this point in the process. I started by penciling in the area, putting a + at the center of the pattern, and then did the browns then the blues. As I reached the point where they should be joining together, I realised… they don’t join. I mis-counted all the way back at the beginning and started the bottom two rows too low. This… will not look fine if I finish it. For starters, her arm would be twice as thick as her leg.
So now we come to the decision. Do I choose half of it to pick all the way out and re-work? It’s a small piece but that’s still a lot of work to undo. Undoing is a bit frustrating as well and doing so would take quite a time investment. Should I call it a wash and start over? I feel a little bad wasting the materials and the time, even though it is a small piece. Honestly, the backing is a leftover scrap that happened to be big enough. I could chalk it up to learning experience and move on- remember to measure twice cut (or start) once, people.
So let’s talk mistakes. Most of our mistakes are going to be small. They might be noticeable but they’ll still be fixable or we just accept that the end product will be fine and move on. Some projects are going to be easily fixed, like accidentally crossing over two stitches when we should have crossed one, and if we catch them, we can move on easily. Some plans have a good idea behind them but have a fatal flaw from the beginning that’s going to horribly mess up the finished product. This instance isn’t huge in the grand scheme of things; at very worst I’ve lost some time when I used the cross stitch to keep my hands busy, and if my hands were busy instead of sitting bored that’s not really a waste, and a minor amount of materials. But some projects are bigger and it’s harder to give up on them or to go back and fix the flaw.
The good news is, it can be done. It takes a lot more effort and frustration than if we check at the beginning, or than if we protect our work from accidents like spills or puppies running off with it (not a mini masterpiece but it was recovered and with a wash and iron, it was fine too), then we can hopefully avoid it. But sometimes it’s not avoidable and we need to accept it and forgive ourselves for having the absolute gall and temerity to make a mistake.
I’m starting on a new piece. It’s bigger, it uses more colors, and I’m not posting it (yet) because it’s a gift. But I’m going to be more vigilant for mistakes, measure more carefully, and I’m going to forgive myself if I make them. And when I’m done, maybe I’ll give the Dancer in Green another try.
Hope you can forgive yourself of mistakes, too. You’re doing great in so many other areas. You’ve got this.
I’m using the patterns by TheStitchPatterns.
Intellectual Property of Elizabeth Doman
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