Framed!

...almost.

In 1984 my mom got me a subscription to Cross Stitch Magazine. (Or was it Cross Stitch and Needle Arts? Something like that.) And three issues had a set of gorgeous pictures that I knew had to be in my kitchen. Not my mom's kitchen, mine.

Of course I wasn't even close to getting married then.

Well, when we were working on closing our house in 2017 I decided it was time to stitch them up. So I did, working on them for a few months after we moved in. And then I set them aside for three more years. But, with the painting of the dining room, it is now time to put them on the wall. I washed my needlework, stretched it, and let it sit for another week or two until I could get a frame.

Now, when I say "get" a frame, I really mean "make" a frame, because it costs a boatload of money to get pictures framed! So I went to the hardware store and looked a decorative mouldings, and finally chose a nice, routed piece of oak. Then that sat around for a few days while I went to choose some mat-boards.

The nice man at the store helped me choose some really lovely colors—a charcoaly color, and one that's like the color of a cardboard gift box tinted slightly olive. He wanted to impress on me that it is difficult to cut mats the right way, without messing them up, and he did have me biting my nails a little bit. But when I weighed $34 for two full-size, 32x40-inch mats against the $96 he'd charge me to cut them to size for me...

I bought the boards and took them home.

Well, last week I built the frame. It was a little bit of a headache, but it turned out all right. And after that cutting the mats should be a piece of cake, right?

Well, it was. Measuring was the trickiest part. Once; twice; three times; four...  At last I was satisfied that I'd make my cut lines in the right places. I cut one mat last night and one this morning. (That is just the life of a mom; I didn't have the time to cut both of them in one sitting.)

This afternoon I mounted the embroidery on a board and set the whole thing into the frame to see how it looked. Lovely!

There it is, on my newly finished table.
(That is me, standing on the chair.)

But, the frame color...

It doesn't look bad—especially sitting on the table, and in a photo. But in real life, and on the blue wall, it looks a little washed out. So of course I had to put it into photoshop to try out frame colors. Here's what I came up with:

1. This is the original, unfinished wood color.

2. I darkened this one just a little
to simulate putting a clear varnish on it.

3. with a light, reddish stain
(or maybe a reddish-tinted varnish)

4. a slightly darker stain

5. whitewash
(or white stain?)

6. more whitewash (stain)
Can you do that? With two coats, maybe?

The differences from one color to its next-door neighbor are subtle, I know. But which color would you choose?