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His Great Grandmother's Last Gift
Wed, May 22, 2019 12:37 PM
Posted by Brendan
My wife recently gave birth to our first child, a wonderful son named Avett. My grandmother, his great grandmother, had been working on what she called the "Fish Picture" ever since I can remember and had planned to gift it to her first great grandchild. For reference, if you google "Fish City cross stitch", you will see the piece.

Unfortunately, she has since passed, leaving the "Fish Picture" barely incomplete. I want to commemorate her and all the work she put into this piece with a beautiful mount and frame but I wanted to check in to see if I can find some expert guidance here. My plan is to leave the piece incomplete and even the thread she was working on and needle in tact. Because she wasn't finished, it was not "signed" by her either. Adding her signature is probably the only augmentation I would be willing to do to the piece.

- What is the proper way to frame and mount a piece?
- She had been working on it for quite some time and she was a smoker (please try to quit!), so i feel like it could use a laundering but I want to maintain the integrity of the piece. Can it be cleaned?
- Does anyone have any ideas of displaying an incomplete piece like this, with an eye on commemorating the artist?

Thank you all in advance for any advice you may have.

  • Reply from Marge
    Wednesday, June 19, 2019 1:55 AM
    First let me say that that is a wonderful thing to do for your son. I would add her signature where you can clearly see it. . I would take the needle off temporarily so that I could hand wash the piece by hand, using mild dish soap and cold water. Rinse the piece and then lay on a towel and then roll to get most of the water out. At this point I would unroll the towel, get a dry towel and just lay the piece on it to finish drying. When almost dry, lay the piece on another dry towel stitching side down, using a cool iron, iron the backside of the fabric to remove the wrinkles. I would then put the needle back on its thread, roll the piece up. I would also take it to a professional framer, they will have the best ideas of how to do the framing. Go to top