What Cross Stitching Means To Me

For most of my life my mom was sick. She spent all of her time in the chair in her bedroom or the sun room. Until her hands got too weak, she spent her days cross stitching. Our house was full of all the wonderful images she had created. That is one of the things I remember most about my mom. I wanted nothing to do with cross stitching at the time, but as I've gotten older and I now have her things hanging in my own house I've come to better appreciate it.

There is a cross stitch store down the street from my sisters house called "Crafty Ewe" that I have to go to every time I'm there for a visit. When I was there in December I bought a bunch of patterns. This last visit I got one more.

I finished this one while I was still in Ohio. I'm going to hang it in Abbi's room between some prints from this book.

This is the one I'm working on now. I started it 2 days ago and I'm about a third done.

While Visiting Teaching this month my partner and I started talking about Elder Uchtdorf's talk from last fall called, "Happiness, Your Heritage." In it he says, "Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something of beauty...As you take the normal opportunities of your daily life and create something of beauty and helpfulness, you improve not only the world around you but also the world within you".

Whenever I start a new cross stitch I become almost obsessed. I can't take a break until it's done. I love watching the blank cloth turn into a beautiful piece of art that often shows things that mean so much to me. I'm so thankful for the unknowing example my mom showed me by spending endless hours doing something I would come to love so much.