The Art of Patience

It all started on a Zoom call. My friend Sarah showed me a project that she was making for her brother who had recently married. It was a cross-stich pattern that showed a house in a snowy scene. She had made her parents a similar one years ago. The design included lots of detail, from the street numbers on the front porch, to a Christmas tree with lights glittering in the window.

I remembered back to my early elementary school days when the older lady who lived next door taught me the basics. She taught me how to put on the embroidery hoop and how to count stitches. How to use sharp scissors, which helps keep the aida cloth from fraying and the thread ends easier to get through the needle. I also learned how to keep the back of the pattern neat and trimmed close. My kind neighbor even purchased me a sampler of the alphabet with the corresponding thread. Once I mastered the basics, I started my sampler. Each letter of my pattern included an object that started with that letter. A was for apple, B for balloons and C had a clown. My younger self pretended I was Laura Ingalls Wilder from Little House on the Prairie learning a pioneer skill. My attention span led me to complete just the letter A with its bright red apple.

Many years later I started a Christmas stocking project. I picked up the colorful kit at an after-Christmas sale with the determination to complete it before the next Christmas, which would be my first with a baby of my own. I never moved past the first few slow tedious nights of stitching. The project hung unfinished in the closet long past the time my son believed in Santa.

Sarah’s finished piece inspired me to try again. I started to browse online and look for ideas. After a week or so or thinking about it I settled on an abstract coffee cup needlepoint design. It took about a week to arrive and I then sorted the threads and put a basket together with scissors, needle and canvas. I remember the first night of moving the thread through the canvas, hours of work for a few inches of progress. I worked through the colors stitch-by-stitch keeping the ends trimmed close on the reverse side. The inches began to add up and I was slowly completing my first project. Four months after that first completed stitch, I hung my abstract coffee cup proudly in my dining room

Since that first project I have made Christmas ornaments for my friends and family, a framed needlepoint flower for my mom and two more projects for myself. I have learned that while all projects are a little different – the necessaries are good lighting, good scissors, patience and forgiveness. Some nights I would get far into my projects, other nights it seemed like I would spend the whole night pulling out the threads from what I had done the night before because I had miscounted or used the wrong color.

My next goal is to make something and enter it into the first-time competitor’s competition at our State Fair. My current projects have me dreaming of blue ribbons or any ribbon. I am sure the ribbon will hang proudly on the refrigerator next to the honor roll certificates and appointment reminders.

I have never been good at painting or drawing. I tried pottery on a wheel and that wasn’t something I was particularly good at either. Needlepoint has finally given me a creative outlet that builds confidence as I get better and faster with my projects.

I wish I could go back and show my next-door neighbor that the knowledge and skills she taught me eventually paid off – even if it did take almost 40 years. As a thank you to her and to share the joy that making something gives you, I have already bought my eight-year-old niece her first needlepoint kit. She hasn’t finished the project, but like my solitary A on a sampler, sometimes the art of patience just takes time.