Sampler 1984

Last week I wrote about an emergency sewing project (putting my daughter’s name on her Christmas stocking). This post is another emergency sewing project, one that took place on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1984.

I like to do needlepoint and cross-stitch, and I often have a project pending. But my projects tend to pend for a long time. Years, in fact. I have a needlepoint pillow underway now that I think I began in 2011.

I started a cross-stitch sampler sometime in 1982 or 1983. The design was based on a sampler done by a young girl during Colonial times. It wasn’t a difficult project, though planning out how to include my name and the year took a little calculation to make the margins on either sides of the words come out right.

sampler 20151213_161601

My sampler was still unfinished when we moved into our current house in October 1984, although I was through the “Give us this day our daily bread” portion. I worked on it that autumn, and by December I had stitched in the line that reads “the year of our Lord 1984.”

Well, once the year was stitched in, I became determined to finish the sampler in 1984. I really didn’t want to rip out the 4 and replace it with a 5.

Nothing is easy to squeeze in during the Christmas season, particularly with a two-year-old just understanding Santa, but I spent what time I could stitching. I still wasn’t quite finished. Finally it was December 31—New Year’s Eve—my last opportunity to finish it truthfully.

My husband and I rarely stay up until midnight, even on New Year’s Eve. That year, I was about four months pregnant with my daughter, and I didn’t want to stay up late, but the sampler called. My husband went to bed about 10:00pm. I kept stitching.

I put in the last stitch around 11:30pm—I think it was on one of the lions. I took the sampler off the frame I use to keep projects stretched while I’m working and smoothed it out with a smile of accomplishment. Then I went to bed.

When have you faced a deadline, and what have you done to meet it?

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