Okie Stitch Along Update

Sorry for the teaser post last week and no final picture. I’ve learned a lot in the last week. Primarily that once you sew your last stitch you are not done. It takes a lot to get a piece like this into a presentable format. I thought I’d share with you all my lessons learned. Hopefully they can help you out if you ever need to frame or mount a piece of embroidery.

The entire time I was stitching Chet I planned to put him into a simple black frame that I bought for $20 from Target. I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to get him into there, but I figured I’d wrap the fabric around some mat board, secure it with a couple of stitches and voila. Turns out it’s a bit more complicated to frame needlework in this way. Needle’n'Thread has an excellently detailed post if you are interested.

I ended up not framing my piece because at the last minute I noticed on the Okie Stitch Along website that they actually wanted them mounted. My first question was what does mounting mean? Luckily Sara Cowan, who is organizing the stitch along, is very kind and patient and answered my questions. She said mounting was…

Just like a painting you’d see without a frame – the way painters stretch their fabric over a rectangle of cheap wood. You could even buy a blank canvas and staple your pressed embroidery piece onto it, exactly where the blank canvas is stapled. You want it to be stretched as tight as possible so there are no wrinkles.

I really dislike dealing with frame shops (because it always seems to cost an arm and a leg) and I didn’t think I could make a frame myself. So I called up my in-laws who do lots of wordworking. I thought maybe they could make me a simple frame and I could staple the fabric on myself. My mother-in-law did have some experience framing needlework and she recommended leaving it to the professionals. She said they have special stretchers they use to stretch the fabric evenly while stapling and that it is just one of those things that is better not to do yourself.

So, the next day I went to my nearest frame shop, Jubilee Gallery, their website advertised familiarity with needlework. Jack, who was working at the time, was really exited by my project and had lots of ideas for nicely mounting my piece. We discussed taking some simple wood frames, painting them white, then placing a white mat board over the frame, because my fabric was so sheer. But when I went to pick up the piece he’d done an even nicer and more thorough job that we’d discussed. He backed the whole thing with some mat board to hide the staples and placed a hanging wire on the top.

I wasn’t wrong though about it costing an arm and a leg. The entire framing job cost me $96.90. This is a LOT for a hobby I usually refer to as inexpensive. But there was no turning back, I had taken months to stitch Chet and promised him to Deluxe OK. Not to mention the attentive, thorough, and quality work that Jubilee did for me. So all in all, I guess that was a price I was willing to pay. Although I will think differently next time before I start a piece that I plan to hang. Probably I will do an embroidery hoop frame as described in this awesome tutorial.