Technique Spotlight with Paige Evans: Never Give Up

There is a story behind this layout!

Like I mentioned a couple weeks ago, when we go on road trips I like to take stitching projects with me – I don’t get carsick so it’s a great way to pass the time between points A and B! Last July I taught a class in The Netherlands which involved a 14 hour drive there and back so I brought along this floral design to stitch. Once I finished, I just wasn’t in LOVE with it! I can’t explain. So I tried to fall in love with it and used colored pencils to fill in the flowers. Still, nothing. At that point I put it in my big box of “flea market” items to bring to classes and tried to sell it. I think I brought it to 6 or 7 classes and no one purchased it. (That’s okay, I was probably asking too much, haha!)

I decided to give the layout one more chance instead of tossing it. I used acrylic paint inside the flowers and instantly the layout looked 1000% better. The colors really popped! At the same time, I was working on a separate project involving printing and die cutting lots and lots of flowers. I had a few minutes to spare one morning and put a few die cut flowers on the stitched flower centers and the rest of the layout came together really quickly. Almost a whole year later!

Moral of the story: don’t give up on layouts! Sometimes they may take days or even months to finish, but in the end, it’s worth it and memories are being preserved and recorded!

Now I’m glad no one bought this stitched background. 🙂 I’m happy with the way it turned out!!