They're Golden!

You may recall that in July my family attended a special reunion in Nova Scotia. My three siblings and I, our spouses and children all joined my parents to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.  The four families chipped in and gifted my folks a weekend in Niagara-on-the-Lake complete with tickets to a musical.  I wanted to do something a little longer lasting, though.

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I made them a fun quilt for their 40th anniversary featuring hand drawn and crayon-coloured blocks by most family members. That quilt hangs proudly in our family cottage.  This time I opted for an embroidery project.  I hemmed a yard of white Essex linen and took it along to Nova Scotia with me for everyone to sign using a Frixion pen.

My parents are the original Sybil and Tom...I'm sure Downton Abbey fans will ask ; )

The middle dedication was prepared in Word, printed and then simply traced onto the linen. The flourishy thingies I found in free clip art online.  I first tried to stitch it with metallic embroidery floss, but that was a disaster. It looked awful, I couldn't knot it without huge lumps and the metallic threads frayed off the rayon core thread like crazy.  Luckily a friend provided this gold coloured rayon floss that worked beautifully.

My favourite 'signature' on the table cloth is by the youngest member of our family, my four year old nephew. After writing his name, he looked up at me and said "I'm thinking about a maple leaf". I asked him if he'd like to draw one and look what he drew, from his memory! He never took the pen off the linen and looked up at me after he drew each line. Adorable.

It is a difficult thing to photograph well, but you get the idea of this gift. There is a round table in my parent's front hall that I thought this would suit perfectly, and that's where my mom has put it. They are currently cruising in luxury around Italy, Croatia and France. That sounds like the perfect way to celebrate 50 amazing years!