Another Finish

I told you that I would finish the piece I picked up last night before the end of the weekend!

This was one of my traveling in the car pieces for a while because it was worked on hardanger fabric; however, working with white floss and making sure that my hands were completely clean while in a car was proving to be more and more difficult, so I had to retire it from car duty. For that reason, it sat in one of my project bags for months and months, unloved and untouched. But now it is finished and I’m quite pleased with how it turned out, especially considering the fact that I think the whole kit was either free or incredibly inexpensive from Nordic Needle. Of course, it is many years old. It came with the design, fabric and generic white floss. I added white Delica beads and Nordic Gold thread (from Rainbow Gallery) in silver to the piece, instead of doing it in all white with french knots. I also ignored where some of the french knots/beads were supposed to go because some of them were over top of the smyrna cross and just didn’t make sense to me.

Overall, it turned out well and I’m glad to have another finish under my belt. Next up is probably a new start for me. I designed a simple piece many months ago (perhaps over a year?) at the request of a co-worker and friend to commemorate the adoption of her little girl. It took me forever to finish the design and I’m still not happy with it, but it will just have to do. Then I brought in my DMC color card for her to pick out colors, we discussed a potential fabric color, I ordered samples from Silkweaver/Zweigart and we decided on a color. I ordered a fat quarter of the fabric, being careful to match the exact specifications (fabric type, count, etc.) of the sample to ensure that I received exactly what I saw in the sample. Imagine my quite unpleasant surprise when, after a month of waiting, the fabric arrived and was an incredibly pale and washed out equivalent of the sample. Terry’s comment was that it looked bleached in comparison. I wrote to Zweigart in late April explaining the issue and asking for help to resolve it. Jim Kornecki explained that perhaps the sample was old, that nothing had changed with the dyeing process and the same woman from Silkweaver was still dyeing the fabrics. He asked me to mail him the sample so that he could go through the fabric that they had in stock to see if anything was a better match. I mailed the sample in early June and then didn’t hear anything for weeks. After about a month, I sent Jim an email asking for an update. Nothing. A couple of weeks later, I sent another email. Nothing. A week later, I sent yet another email. Still nothing. I finally broke down and called Zweigart, leaving a message for Jim, but he never called me back. As you can imagine, after months of screwing around with these people, I was very close to writing a blog post slamming them for their complete lack of customer service. Something told me to just give them a little bit more time.

I was completely shocked when, a week ago, I received an email from Jim out of the blue saying that they had just finished up dyeing several batches of the fabric and after many attempts, they were able to reproduce the sample that I had sent back. I was in disbelief to hear that they had been working on trying to dye a batch that would properly match the sample. They sent me a fat quarter that I received a couple of days ago and, lo and behold, it does match the sample closely enough that I am pleased.

I guess the bottom line of the whole experience is that, despite the lack of communication from them, Zweigart ultimately came through for me and got me a piece of fabric that I can use to finally start the adoption piece. I am a happy camper.

Now I have to make sure I stitch and frame the piece before the 2nd anniversary of the adoption next April. 😉