Stitching Bloggers Question - June

Each month Lake Stitcher  will pose a question for each of us to answer either in your own blog or as a comment on her blog. You may also post your answer as a comment to my blog if you choose.  This month the SBQ is:


Tell us about something that you have stitched or plan to stitch for any father in your life.  Maybe it’s for your father, your father-in-law, your children's father, your grandfather, your godfather, or someone who was or still is an important father-figure in your life.  Why did you choose this particular piece of stitching?   Tell us the story behind it.

The only father I have done any stitching for is my husband. I have done four pieces for him. The first one I did for him was in recognition of his favorite pastime for the last 9 years, golf. When my husband undertakes to learn a sport it becomes a consuming passion. This is what happened when at the age of 50 he decided to give up his every day basketball league in favor of a sport that was less demanding on his joints. Our 11 year old son had just been to golf camp,  introduced him to the sport, and a local legend was born. In recognition of his passion for playing golf and becoming good at it I stitched him a small design called "I love Golf"from an issue of Just Cross Stitch Magazine. It was his father's day gift in 2004.

  And because a simple one part question is never adequate, let’s go some more:
Often times we identify our love of needlework and our skills with our mothers or grandmothers or other women.  It’s understandable because often they were are first teachers or role models.  Now let’s think about our stitching life as it relates to our dads.  Is there anything about our approach to stitching that we can recognize as traits of our fathers?  For instance, does your dad (or any other important man in your life) have an approach to one of his interests that you can observe and think, “Hey….if I substitute the word “needlework” for “fly fishing”, we’d be pretty darn similar!”  So tell us about it.

My dad has been involved with electronics most of his adult life. He is meticulous and organized whenever he was building some electronic quizmo. I spent many hours as a teenager watching him work on the delicate small components and learned much from him about how to plan a project, collect your materials and tools, set up your work location, working carefully and precisely, and cleaning up when the project was done. Much of this knowledge applies very well to my needlework and I use it everyday. His other  axiom was "measure twice cut once" for household projects. This is a practice I employ in cutting fabric but also in checking my stitching where you often need to count twice before proceeding.