Go Big or Stay Home

I'm hosting craft night at my house this week & have agonized over what to choose for our project. Although our group has worked successfully for over two years, it seems that our tastes are starting to diverge a bit and as is natural, not everyone has the same taste or style. I use Pinterest to keep my project ideas in one place, and even started a board for our group to share with each other (all of us can add pins). Here are a few ideas I would have loved to choose, but I didn't think everyone would like them as much as I do.

Originally I had planned to host craft night a couple weeks ago, and chose oversized cross-stitching for the project, but the date ended up getting changed, and none of my friends seemed too excited about my craft - even though I thought it was awesome! So after thinking long and hard, and searching high and low, I decided to choose ....  mega cross-stitch art! I mean, who can argue with the awesomeness of these pieces?

All these images are of artwork created by Jessica Decker, check out her amazing work! I was tempted to copy her anchor exactly, but decided to go with something else for my first try. I liked the idea of a monogram, and was tempted by this pin.

But the letter C isn't that visually appealing to me, so I finally decided to go with the number 5, for the five people in our family. I used a 11x14 canvas, which I spray painted in a metallic champagne color, and I used hot pink mason twine from Home Depot instead of embroidery thread. It was a bit challenging, because the twine is thick and requires a wide-eyed needle, which was hard to get through the canvas. I was developing some pretty good blisters, depite my thimble use, before I had the idea to wear my yellow dish-washing gloves. I felt pretty silly, but it worked very well! Here are some shots of my project. The first picture is the design I made on the computer.

I finally convinced my sis-in-law to do a giant cross-stitch at craft night too, and I spent an afternoon last week helping her with this design. (She's a chicken nut.)

I hope these project ideas inspire my craft group friends and that they will all take on the project this week. I say, Go Big or Stay Home! Just kidding though - I hope they all come, even if they don't do the mega cross-stitch. Next week I will post some more detailed instructions for anyone who might want to try this, and hopefully I'll have the wisdom of several of my friends' projects behind me too. Wish us luck!