Welcome to X-Stitch Hall

A little while back I shared a small but hopefully growing collection of cross stitched treasures I have and a plan to eventually hang them in my front entry hall. Each of the pieces I've picked up send a clear message of the kind of home I want to have. A welcoming home-sweet-home where you are encouraged to live life at its best, a place of comfort and rest where family and friends feel God's love and are surrounded by interesting old treasures. :)

Several weeks ago, during a zip into Sally's, I scored a bunch of these brown metal stencil-tags at the bottom of a box of junk. I found the letters I needed to spell our last name and our house number for mere pocket change. I was psyched.

(According to that picture, I bought them at the same time as this $2.99 cake pedestal I never told you about.)

So I recently was inspired to finally unify the x-stitch frames and hang them up along with the stencils for our house number.  I ended up just spray-painting the two ugliest frames black, keeping one original black and one original brown. I don't mind a mix of brown and black, except when there's three black and only one odd-ball brown. So I decided to move another brown-framed piece of stitchery that was already hanging on another wall in the mudroom to join this mix and keep the other brown frame company. And like I usually do when nailing things up, I just sort of eye-balled the arrangement after playing around with potential layouts on the floor. Measuring is for cutting wood, not hanging frames.

Welcome to Cross Stitch Hall.

 

If you like my hanging collection of old cross stitch pieces then you're probably weird like me. If you don't, then perhaps this isn't for you. More on that here.  

Now I also gotta think about what color to eventually paint these walls. Suggestions?

The shoe/boot boxes were scored at a yard sale a couple years ago.

So I thought it was all set and I took my pictures when this dark hall is at its brightest. Then later that day I was digging through a closet for something and I stumbled across a thrift shop treasure that my daughter found in Florida last year. I just had to add it to this wall because, well, it just goes with the "home" theme:

I appreciate vintage needlework but I also like to dabble in it myself. I'll be honest though, I don't think I've picked up a hoop and needle since I've had kids! So sad. :( Lately, I've been itching to get back to my old  hobby and I'm having trouble deciding whether to start back with some doodle stitching or with this Martha Stewart template for our family.

I want to do a couple very small cross stitch and/or embroidery pieces but my stitching won't go in X-Stitch Hall.  I'd like to hang a couple somewhere else, maybe along with these beauties:

And this is probably a pipe dream, but I'd love to do each of these season patterns for our three season porch. Maybe I should break in the porch this spring with a stitching club. Who wants in?