Little House on the Prairie Cross Stitch

My mother LOVES Laura Ingalls Wilder. She has read pretty much everything she can get her hands on written by and about Laura, so I thought it would be neat to stitch for her something Laura-related for Christmas last year.

I found an awesome pattern on Etsy and knew I just had to stitch it.  Laura patterns are hard to come by, and this one was perfect. I just wish I had captured a better image of the framed piece than this sad little cell phone pic before I gave it to my mom.

Pattern by Hardcore StitchCorps

This cross stitch piece is based on first edition cover of Little House on the Prairie, as seen below. Another example, and a much better one than the Wiki pic below, can be found on Flickr. 

 

First edition cover

I think I did a decent job at finding a piece of fabric that would work for this piece. While it's not quite the same shade of yellowish brown as you see in the pic above, it's not as dark brown as you see in the picture below. (Side note: I think the Wiki pic above is far more yellow than both the Flickr pic and the ebay pic I linked.) The fabric is variegated and has a nice worn look to it that doesn't come across in pictures.

I used DMC 3371 (my favorite dark brown!) for all of the stitching.

I framed this piece myself in a 10x13 frame. I like the look of simplicity that came from framing without a mat. I didn't want anything fancy or elegant. I wanted this to look like the book cover, and I really think it does!  More importantly, so does my mom, who shed a few happy tears when she opened her gift on Christmas Day.

☺☺☺