The Case for Quality

 

I was admiring the progress on my “All Is Vanity” cross stitching the other day. It feels so rewarding to see how the image is emerging. I admit that I congratulate myself on all those tiny stitches and my surprising attention to detail on the piece. You can see my first post on this topic, published on November 11, 2020. 

I noticed, though, that the area I had stitched in black floss didn’t look as good as it should. The white Aida cloth showed through. This surprised me. The other floss colors covered the canvas very well. Even the other dark colors. The only problem was the black floss, and I had used two strands just as I had with all the other colors.

My first thought was that perhaps I wasn’t using actual DMC floss. Over the years, I’ve accumulated leftover floss from stitching kits. Most of those kits enclosed their own brand of floss, which, honestly, is rarely as good as the DMC brand. DMC floss appears to have a slight sheen to it; most of the non-DMC brands do not.

There might be a life lesson here. (I love to deem random observances as life lessons.)

The quality of what goes into a project determines the quality of how it turns out. I know. This is not rocket science; I’m not the first to figure this out.

In fact, it made me think of something my mother told me when I was learning to cook. “Use the best ingredients,” she taught me. “Then, even if it doesn’t turn out quite the way you expected, it will still taste good.” That’s assuming you measure correctly and don’t burn or undercook it, of course. A corollary idea is attributed, I think, to Julia Child. “If you make a mistake and a dish is still edible, just change the name.”

How else can we apply the principle of good materials? Here are a few other examples.

My Thread Head friends are very particular about the yarn they choose for the caps, scarves, sweaters, socks or mittens they knit or crochet. Some of them start with wonderful yarn, then figure out what to do with it.

We used dollar-store puzzles in our church library (when we had patrons there all the time). The pictures were nice, but the die-cut pieces were substandard, making the puzzles really hard to complete. On the other hand, maybe we just weren’t as good at puzzling as we thought we were.

I have had bad results with cheap nail polish. I strongly prefer gel ink pens to stick Bics. I once had a wool suit that I paid way too much money for, but it lasted for more than 20 years.

Back to the cross-stitch. I bought more DMC 310 and tried using three strands. That seems to solve the problem. And, at some point, I plan to redo or stitch over the wimpy black portions that I discovered the other day.

Do you have any additional applications of the “use good materials” principle? Let me know!

Here's an update on my All Is Vanity stitching, as of January 5. Most of the image is complete. Since the background is black, there's a LOT of DMC 310 stitching in my future.