October, 2002
Why
AABBCCDD.com?
It reminds one of the basics. Practice practice,
practice -- the stepping stones of growth! Learning in small, tentative steps, shaky at
first; then growing more confident, more bold as steps of
skill are learned and applied in an effort to achieve
perfection. Soon a masterpiece
evolves from a tiny thread of endeavor. Before you know
it, you've lassoed the world!
Learning a new
skill, hobby, learning to compute, to read, to
write, to stitch, to play sports, or just simply
learning for the pure pleasure of expanding one's mind into new areas of knowledge
requires time, patience and
practice. Not many become a master without
accomplishing many small repetitive tasks along the
way.
Do you remember learning to print? In
school we had charts of the ABC's above the
backboard. We also had them in workbooks. As
we learned to print, we took out our tablets and pencils and
copied those letters over and over and over. We learned how to make all the capital letters,
then all the small letters. Then we learned to slant
them and write instead of print. Before long we were putting
letters together to form
words and sentences and stories! Those little strokes
became meaningful symbols.
I also chose this site name
because many of the early
needlework samplers have each letter of the alphabet repeated,
sometimes twice for each letter. Samplers exist with each letter repeated as many as four
times. Each letter represents a study before it is
finally stitched on a fine piece of linen. Before the
school system in the United States admitted girls, stitching
the alphabet on linens and samplers was also the way in which
young ladies learned the alphabet and learned to
read.
These early efforts are footprints of
patient practice. Not all of these efforts were
*pretty*. Look at this sampler, a piece I added to my
collection this year. This piece is most likely a fragment of a
study piece. Notice the letters *N* and *B* in the top
left corner. Were those are the initials of
the person doing the stitching? Is the *N* stitched
wrong? Perhaps it should have been an *A*. Why would the row
not start with *A* and *B*? Note how the color runs in
the *C-D-E* portion in the lower left. A
first glance might convince you the letters on this sampler
appear to be stitched vertically, rather than horizontally across the fabric.
One might think the person who stitched this piece was not following a
pattern.
Isn't it interesting these early studies
have survived years of wear, probably tucked away at the
bottom of some truck or box. It was not a framed
piece, to be put on display. It did not have utilitarian
value and was not stitched on a tablecloth, napkin, or even a
garment. It was a study, a practice -- an effort to
attain perfection before attempting the technique on valuable
cloth. Yet it survived and it does have value in
today's market. Interesting. Pay more
attention to your practice pieces!
As I debated what to name my site, a
derivative of the way in which early samplers were stitched
seemed like a perfect solution. You may not find
this site following a *pattern*. You might
recognize boring repetition as I strive to update and perfect.
The rows may
slant in an unconventional direction. You are likely to
find areas of imperfection, most likely in the form of broken links
or miss-spellings! You might spot areas where the
colors fade or run. However, if I am lucky, aabbccdd.com
will show
some creativity and will survive the wear and tear of
the Internet.
My goal is for this site to be a sampler -- where
various themes will be explored, studied and shared with the
online community.
These themes
will not always be needlework, though it is the area where I am
starting to build content. My plans are for
this site to expand in many ways and into many other topics
other than needlework, but first things first!
The first goal will be to upload complimentary patterns I have
designed over the years and make them, once again, available
to the stitchery community on the Internet.
aabbccdd.com
. . .
Until neXt time,
Meri
All
text and Graphics ©Copyright October 2002, aabbccdd.com.home.att.net
Meridel Abrams, All Rights Reserved
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