SBQ: What do you do with completed patterns?

This week’s ques­tion is the first of some recy­cled ques­tions. It was first asked back in 2005, and I don’t think I even knew about SBQ then, so I doubt that I’ve answered it before.

After you stitch a pat­tern or kit, what do you do with it?

I’ve done so few kits that they hard­ly count. I think I have just about every pat­tern I’ve ever stitched, though. I wish I had pho­tos of all the items I’ve stitched from those pat­terns! I guess hang­ing on to the pat­tern is a mem­oir, of sorts, as I’m very unlike­ly to stitch most things more than once.

Long ago, some­one on rec.crafts.textiles.needlework, I think, men­tioned fram­ing pieces with the orig­i­nal pat­tern attached to the back for his­tor­i­cal pur­pos­es. Anoth­er per­son rec­om­mend­ed doing that so that if the piece was ever dam­aged, infor­ma­tion about how it was sup­posed to look would be avail­able to help with its restoration.

I don’t gen­er­al­ly sit around think­ing about the his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of any­thing that I cre­ate. I focus on the joy of bring­ing some­thing beau­ti­ful into the world and the love I feel for the intend­ed recip­i­ent. I do think, though, that if I had framed pieces made by an ances­tor, it would be fas­ci­nat­ing to have infor­ma­tion about how she made it. I think I might at least try to place a label on the back of any pieces I have framed in the future to iden­ti­fy the orig­i­nal designer/publisher and title, along with my name, who I cre­at­ed the piece for, and approx­i­mate­ly when I stitched it.

Since I don’t sew, I gen­er­al­ly just frame my stuff (when I even­tu­al­ly get around to it!). Well, I’ve made a lot of triv­ets these past few win­ter hol­i­days, and there’s no good way to iden­ti­fy the mak­er or design­er on those (they’re intend­ed to hold hot things, any­way!) And there was a chef’s hat I per­son­al­ized for my broth­er-in-law and a tote bag for a Girl Scout leader. But the vast major­i­ty of my work is intend­ed for framing.