Cherish Wedding Hearta Cross Stitch Kit by Janlynn

This pattern makes a lovely memento for a wedding. You need to be very careful in counting as there are lots of empty squares. I made this for a nephew and his bride. Turns out their wedding colors were a match for the ones in the pattern, so after the ceremony I gathered some of the silk flower petals the flower girl tossed out and I added them (along with bead centers) to the picture. This means the picture will be stretched and not pressed but the effect will be the same.

Perfect for the person I was stitching for but difficult to follow.

I chose this embroidery because it had space for the change I needed to make: my niece had 2 weddings on 2 separate dates to accommodate families in the US and Spain. This is what I like about counted cross stitch—the ability to make changes! So I took out the Cherish part and used that space for the names, and the rest for 2 dates and places. Lucky for me they chose blue for a wedding color. So mine said, "Diego ** Brittany (asterisks were the hearts), Hopedale 10 June, Madrid 24 de Junio 2017. (See review on Amazon for a picture.) I also didn't care for the coral color of the stitched accents--coral nowhere else in the design--so I changed that to pearl colored beads, and it looked very elegant. The difficult parts were the design being so large that it required 2 pages, but there was no overlap, so hard to see where lines fit together. I drew a couple lines from one page onto the chart on the other page. Another tricky part is the heart outline. Lots of empty space in the middle makes it easy to lose your place on the border and to get it to come together correctly. Finally, there's a lot of white on white stitching for the lily of the valley. Use a well lighted spot and a magnifying glass! It took a long time, but it was worth it. Fantastic result. --Kathleen