Bless This Hizzle Custom Cross Stitch

Last May, my childhood friend got married. We'd been close friends since elementary school (so over twenty years!). For her wedding gift, I wanted to make her something special that both commemorated the exciting occasion, was personal, and incorporated her amazing sense of humor. She and her fiancée at the time were just wanting to save up to buy a place of their own. I knew nothing out there existed that was exactly what I wanted (well, I'm sure something existed on Etsy but I wanted to make it myself) so I decided to see if I could design my own cross stitch. I've never done anything like it before as all of my previous cross stitches (see here and here) have been kits. I like to think I was successful....

So, a while before I started (but knew what I wanted to make), another friend's stepmother was doing some cleaning and asked if she wanted a pile of cross stitch centered magazines. My friend didn't cross stitch but knew I did so she asked me if I wanted them. I said yes and took the pile and began to flip through them looking to see if there was a house in any of them. I found this one:

I liked the shape of the house but it was very small compared to what I was imagining. I got to thinking about how I could blow up the house and make it larger. On the opposite page was the cross stitch design.

I color coded it and transferred it to some graphing paper I had printed off (and made WAY too large). For every square on the original design, I colored in four squares on my graph paper. The design ended up looking like this:

To get the wording centered, I figured out how many columns of the graph each word would take up. For example, if the cross stitch was going to be 43 columns in width and the word was 21 columns long, I did (43-21=20/2=10). So, I would count off 10 columns from the left and start the word there. It ended up working pretty well!

I think I started the stitch in March or April. It should have been plenty of time to finish for May but, as always, life got in the way. Here is a quick progression of some pictures I took:

I made the cross stitch using all old colors from my previous cross stitches plus a random pack of thread I bought on Amazon (since I didn't have any greens).

 

I was initially worried about the gray in the roof but I think it came out just fine!

I made the writing in a combination of purple and orange as my friend's wedding colors were yellow, orange, and raspberry.

Then I framed it and gave it to her a little while after the wedding (I believe around August).

I am really happy with how it came out! I think it looks great and is the perfect, custom wedding gift!

Once again, congratulations to my dear friend on her wedding!