Boy, is it scary to say I’ve been stitching for 30 years, but it's oh-so-true!

My first love was Petit point. I had trouble finding patterns the right size so I started designing my own. I had so many requests for my jewelry pieces that I found the manufacturer of the findings, Rayberts . I became friends with Margaret Seemann, the owner, and began designing patterns for their catalogues. In 1997 we released petite point kits featuring my patterns and her jewelry. Margaret decided to announce her retirement in 2003, at the age of 75. With that, and the selling of her company, the jewelry line was lost. What a shame. Her findings were widely sold across Europe and of the best quality. God Bless her as she travels the world, enjoys her grandchildren, and is still skiing.

In the summer of 2003, I met with my best friends, CC and Nancy, for a girls’ night. We talked about our dreams and what we would like to accomplish. CC is a wonderful artist and wanted to start a cultural arts & crafts center. Nancy loved to write and wanted to be published. I wanted to find a way to design now that I would not have the jewelry findings to use. So we all made a pact that in the next year we were going to work on making our dreams come true. That was a good motivation. CC moved to Kekaha, Hawaii, and is continuing to gather research materials for the center. Nancy is traveling all over the world, busy writing, and has had stories and articles published in the “Chicken Soup For The Soul” series as well as other publications. I published my first 6 patterns and released them in time for the Columbus wholesale market in May of 2004. Today I crave working on specialty stitches. This developed into a form of stitching that I am now calling Sym- stitching. The Sym is short for Symmography. You may look at the stitches and know they seem familiar but may not know why. The stitches are string art that have been adapted for fabric. Most Symmography is a variety of crescents. It allows me to work with geometric shapes that I never had a way of working with before. The stitches may look complicated but when broken down with the step- by-step diagrams included with the patterns they can be very simple. Look at the pattern Turquoise Gold to get a feel for what I am describing.

I thank you for taking the time to browse the pattern pages. We are working on the site and adding new categories. One of these will be an Oops Page. I strive to produce patterns without mistakes but it does happen. Keslyns welcome any question, concerns, or corrections in any pattern you might want to report. If you are unable to find patterns in your local shop you may contact me at sales@keslyns.com. Beads may be ordered separately.

Lynda Keske Phone: (360) 892-5662 Fax: (360) 260-7150
1208 NE Cedar Ridge Loop Vancouver, WA 98664
sales@keslyns.com

Happy Stitching!
Lynda