My First Framing Attempts....

Had some fun, and learned a few things, when a
friend, Heather, and I got together and framed a
few of my stitching finishes. Heather has the
cutting tools, and has framed a few things for
herself, but I've never done anything like this before.
Probably because when it comes to figuring out
widths, heights and adjusting for edging materials
my mathematical skills are less then stellar. Which
is why I went into banking as a profession??? But
I digress.....

We started out with visits to a art materials store,
which used to be called Loomis but has now been
bought out and runs under another name. There
we looked at mats, and other materials for framing.
After we'd gotten everything that we could from
there we moved on to Michaels, where we finished
off our shopping with the final ingredients for our
projects.

Then it was back to Heather's for lunch, and then
we got to work. I'd chosen five pieces for framing
but only one was a priority because it was a gift.
The others were for me so fell under the category
of "it'd be nice if...". I let Heather do the measuring,
cutting and stuff and just handed her tools and
offered a helping (steadying) hand where needed.
Probably my biggest contribution at this stage was
just staying out of her way.

We worked steadily at it for the entire afternoon
and well into the evening. We framed three pieces
in total, with varying degrees of success. We
framed Faith first and it's the one with the most
flaws I'm afraid, which is a shame because it's the
one I'm giving away. But again I emphasize that
we're not experts at this, and I've never done
anything like this before. And from what I under-
stand cutting mats for framing can be really
tricky....and it is!


Okay, the stitching should have been stretched over the
mounting board more on one side, and the mat cut isn't
perfect on one side. But I love the choices we made for
the mats on this one and it was such a thrill to see it
matted and framed, with the mats bringing out the
design details. We fussed and refitted this one so many
times, but in the end decided that we'd just wreak it if
we kept picking at it, not to mention diminishing our
pleasure in the whole enterprise. So we declared the
thing done, and moved on to our next project.


This was the biggest of the three pieces that we framed
and the one that I wanted done most of all. We chose
a dark green mat for the outside, and a gold mat to peak
through around the edge, which is meant to bring out the
bits of gold thread in the project. I helped more with the
adjustment of the project on its base, and we didn't get
too stressed out with the stretching, and all in all I think
it turned out really good. Actually, I'm thrilled with this
one and can't wait to get it hung now. And finally we did this one. Bees was the smallest of the
three projects, and therefore in some ways the easiest to
handle. I placed this one on it's base myself because it
was too small for both of us to work on, and it turned out
just fine. We couldn't find a mat in a colour to suit the
project so we bought some rosy pink paper which was
the colour we wanted and glued it to the mat base.
There really wasn't much room for a mat edge on the
sides of this piece, but we managed to show just enough
and I love how the mat colour makes the project pop!
This is such a pretty design.

So there you have it. I'm pleased to have some of my
most recent pieces framed, and I think I've gotten over
my initial fears and trepidations with regards to
framing, and I'd like to try it again.

I do have questions though and if anyone reading this
post has experience framing I'd love to hear from you.
We used tacky board to mount the pictures. This had
it's good and it's bad issues, but I'm thinking I'd like
to try pinning to foam board next time and seeing how
that works. Also, we used paper tape to secure the
stitching at the back. I know many stitchers weave
the back to hold the stitching in place for sewing
projects, but do you also do this for framing?? That
wouldn't work for bigger pieces would it??

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Not much else going on around here at the moment.
The temperatures continue to hover above freezing
and the snow continues to melt away. The birds are
convinced it's Spring, even if the rest of us have our
doubts, and they're singing their little hearts out. And
we can see signs of Spring migration in progress. The
Cedar Waxwings are back in town, in their bi-seasonal
stop over, and they're sharing the last of the cherries
on our trees with the Pine Grosbeaks. The cardinals
are serenading their sweethearts first thing in the
morning, and we've got a young hawk visiting the area
and throwing the mourning doves into a tizzy. I
haven't spotted any Robins yet, but I'm sure they're
around and I'll see one soon.

Cheers all!