Wow! I am feeling a great weight of responsibility! A friend of ours from the UK has requested that I make an embroidery for him. In the last year, we have moved to Italy and he has moved to Madrid. We like to stay in touch and compare notes about what we miss about the UK and what we enjoy about our new homes. I have developed my interest in stitching and Wesley has started blogging about the food scene in Madrid. You can check him out on IG: @muchbites_madrid – I warn you, it will make you hungry, or want to move to Madrid, or both! One of the things we agree about our respective moves to continental Europe is that it has considerably increased our coffee addiction!
Therefore, it seemed appropriate when Wesley requested that I make him a coffee related embroidery after this piece of work I posted on IG.
He had a very specific colour scheme and layout in mind, so I set to work on designing the piece for him. Wesley’s idea involved quite a bit of text – more than I normally include – so I did some VERY rough working out using a Stitch Sketch app I downloaded recently. I just wanted to get an idea of how the whole thing might possibly work.
Ha! I said it was rough!! I find using a cross stitch design app on my iPad really good for designing and working out new patterns. I am not sure how effective they are for creating patterns for distribution (I haven’t tried that yet) but they’re great for personal use. After a little back and forth over email, I came up with the final design. I have only started designing cross stitch patterns for myself in the last few weeks so I was quite nervous about it all.
Our trip to London last week was also an opportunity to buy the supplies for this project (and a few more I have bubbling away on the back burner). Yesterday, I finalised what floss I want to use and made a start….over my morning coffee, rather appropriately!
I have made many gifts for friends and family but I have never taken a commission. It feels very, very different! I sense that I am taking even more care over my work than usual. I enjoyed the challenge of designing something that had to work within the parameters of someone else’s requirements – although it did help that Wesley was very easy going about it all!
I am looking forward to seeing how this will work out.
Back soon!
Ambrosia Stitches 
Congratulations on your first commission, such a good feeling! I’ve nominated you for the Liebster award. Please see my blog post for more info. All the best, Kate
https://theunfinishedcrafter.wordpress.com/2015/02/11/liebster-award/
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Thank you for your kind comments and for the nomination. I have just started blogging and I only follow a couple of other blogs at the moment – nowhere near the 11 I’d need to tag!! I need to take some time to get to know some other creative blogs, so when I get around to that I will try and take this forward. Thank you so much for thinking of me – I really appreciate it….and I think your blog is lovely!
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Hello there – thank you for the ‘follow’ on my blog. I popped over to return the visit and am delighted to see you are living in Italy – my second favourite place in the whole world after home 🙂 Congrats on the commission – it is a big compliment! I shall look forward to reading more of your adventures with wine and coffee and pizza and maybe a little stitching too 🙂
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Thank you so much! We have been so fortunate to take a year out in Italy. We are popping to Venice to catch the end of Carnivale tomorrow so I am hoping for lots of stitching inspiration from all of the amazing costumes!
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Ha! I love that you are ‘popping to Venice for Carnivale’ Fabulous 🙂
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