Masterpiece

This is my ambitious project.  It all started with the castle.  I wanted to try something new that would take a little more time. So i did and afghan stitch which is kinda like knitting with one needle. after that i cross-stitched the castle on to.  well what to do with a panel like that? so i sat on it awhile and decided that i could make a family blanket! little did i know what i was getting myself into...

so i figured every one could draw up their own panel. that would take a while right? so off i went to the store to get graft paper and told everyone to draw me a picture and i would turn it into their special panel! 5 people and 9 panels total well i already had the center the castle! and i would come up with stuff for the other 3. anyways this is Kenny's panel. Believe.

Dillon finished his next. cute story. he was practicing drawing on graft paper and for his subject the electrical socket, you know the thing on the wall you plug your stuff into.  well then he started playing around and turned the socket into a pig! he liked it and decided that is what he wanted to be remembered for. if you look at the pigs face you can see its made out of a wall socket!

So here is Jacob's he was into pirates at the time. can you tell? nice work free hand.  and trust me it is not easy drawing in graft blocks.  meanwhile I'm still working on all my other panels too which silly me didn't take picks as i went too bad. but i realized i would have to find a way to connect all these panels. so i made rose trims to go around each one.

Josh is a creative one to he just grabbed his colored pencils and started going.  Pretty neat right? well i think so! well i realized i needed corner panels too. and they weren't gonna be very large at all and i needed 16 of them so i used the 12 signs of the zodiac and the 4 seasons. plus 24 rose panels!

And finally joey's he took forever and i thought i would never get this project done. he really took his time coming up with what he wanted to do. i had just about every thing done,except sewing it all together, when he finally gave me his graft paper.  the pic is his rendition for the hammers in Pink Floyd The Wall.

Here it is before i started sewing just be sure of what i was doing. 12 simple rose panels for the vertical and 12 with buds for the horizontal. also i finished a spider (for my favorite holiday HALLOWEEN!) the lion cause all my boys are Leos and a butterfly up to for beauty freedom and the ability to change :)

remember this was only one little panel to try something new and it turned into a HUGE project. notice the ones in back are standing on chairs? yeah who knew that 9 little panels 24 edging and 16 corner pieces would be so big when all sewn together?

so here it is! this whole project took me over 2 years to put together! now that is not exclusive years i still made other projects along the way.  but if i was to guess i would say i put some around 300  hours into it! I love it! it will be a family treasure even after I'm gone! the only down side is i finished this in January of 2006 and i was so sure that i wouldn't be having anymore children and in 08 i had Bella......what to do????