By Joan Hershberger
jhershberger@eldoradonews.com
Years ago I ran across a quote that reflects my interests and my passion: “I have always imagined that paradise will be a sort of library,” by Burge. I chose the thought as the theme for our living room when we re-decorated it several years ago. The quote fit the room and my lifestyle perfectly. I wanted to use it on a cross stitch picture that would balance a completed cross stitch I had found at a yard sale.
I wanted a picture of books. Pulling out box after box of cross stitch patterns, I flipped through pages searching for cross stitch patterns of books. I found a couple of very small pieces that would fit onto a bookmark, but they were hardly adequate for a wall hanging. A larger pattern of a stack of three or four books seemed too squat and simplistic for what I envisioned. I could expand on the pattern, but I did not like the look.
I consulted my husband about my dilemma – after all, he does have about 30 hours of college credit in art.
“Take three shades of any color: stitch a couple rows of dark on the right, a few rows of the main color in the center, then a row of light and back to one row of the main color,” he said. With a darker outlining thread, a few strands of metallic thread for the band found on hardback books and I filled my shelf with 16 books.
I would like to say that I sat down and thought about all the colors and sizes of the books. I didn’t. In fact, I began by stitching the border to match the size of the framed cross stitch piece I already owned. Then I began stitching whatever looked good. Tall books, short books, some fat, some thin and some in-between. Whatever looked good to me.
The finished, filled bookshelf pleased me, but the books needed titles. For a while, I puzzled over what to write on the back of the books: the names of my favorite authors, the names of my favorite books, all the places I had lived or attended school? I realized I did not want any of those. I wanted the books titled with the names of my children and their spouses.
My husband framed it and we hung it on the wall.
There it hung until I saw a contest at The Stitcher’s Workshop in Norphlet for completed work. I had to share this piece. Several folks saw it and asked the owner, Pat Dugan, for a copy of the pattern to stitch their own family bookshelf.
Dugan had to tell each one that there was no pattern.
And that’s where things stood until a couple of years ago when again someone asked how they could replicate the pattern. Pat and I happened to be in the same room. I said, “I don’t know how to make a pattern. I just made it up as I stitched it.”
“I know how to make a pattern,” Pat said. I gave her the framed picture and permission to replicate it.
She took it back to her shop and began working out the details of the colors of the thread, charting where each color of stitch needed to be and the quote that I had used to frame the shelf. With the chart carefully charted in black and white, she asked Kerri Tittle to replicate it to verify the chart and to stitch Pat’s family members’ names onto the back of the completed books. It looks like my original design, but with the finesse of an expert stitcher. I tend to wind the threads when I stitch.
Pat copyrighted the chart under her new design name “APH-Design,” found a distributor for the pattern and printed out a bundle of covers, patterns and pictures of the completed project neatly framed by her husband, Bill Dugan, who frames pieces for many of her customers.
In a recent conversation she explained that my haphazard way of developing a picture tends to be the way that many designs in needlework have been developed. Someone wants something, has an idea and they begin stitching. Only afterward do they chart the results for others to replicate.
Pat Dugan has been working with needlework of all varieties for the last 20 years. She began in South Carolina and re-opened her shop in Union County when her husband was asked to move here to help set up and establish Pacific MDF. Her knowledge and expertise became the basis for naming her new business APH-Design.
“It began in Atlanta when I had a little shop with several women who came to stitch. My son would come in after work and talk. When I bought a brand new Windows 95 computer and had to set up my first email account, I had to choose an email address. He suggested ‘askpathow’ because he said he was always hearing the stitchers say ‘I don’t know how to do it, ask Pat how.’”
“I still have a couple emails with that as my name,” she said. “My whole career in needlework has been working with charting and designs.” She went on to describe the technical difficulties she encountered in developing her first chart using a computer.
Only then did I realize that literally, my first cross stitch design was her first venture into the world of charting on a computer and her first design for APH-Design. With this chart and some others that she has lined up to be charted and printed, Pat Dugan of The Stitcher’s Workshop in Norphlet launches a new branch of her business this month – creating and selling needlework patterns.
Through a couple decades in the business she knows that interest in various forms of needlework wax and wane; styles come and go and personal abilities vary. While shoppers can still find the intricate patterns popular 20 and 30 years ago, the current trend has shifted towards more simplistic, folk art patterns that can be completed in an evening or two.
My pattern, which Pat called, “Reader’s Paradise” (and many other needlework options) can be purchased at The Stitcher’s Workshop, 104 Kennedy Road in Norphlet. Or you can order online at stitchersworkshop.com or email her at pat@stitchersworkshop.com or call her at 546-2272.