Goldwork Tulip Framed

A week after I took my first JE piece in to be framed, I decided to get my goldwork tulip framed as well. I went to Michael's as usual since their prices are pretty good and they've always done a good job for me in the past. I picked out some really pretty frames and mats to set it off, and I think the color scheme turned out great:

But for the first time, I was a little disappointed in the overall frame job. If you look at the silk around the right leaf and the little curlicue below it, it's rather puckered. I didn't notice till I got it home because I'm rather near sighted, and the framer had held it up for me to see from across a large table, so it was about four or five feet away when I saw it in the store. Since I had this piece quite taut on my JE frame during stitching and there was no puckering like this, I knew that it could be stretched better than this. But I don't enjoy making a fuss, and from a distance, it was less noticeable:

Above, you can see it hanging on my bedroom wall, and I think it looks fine from four or five feet away. It really complements the colors in my bedroom. In particular, I think it looks very nice next to my JE piece:

But in this slightly closer shot, from maybe two or three feet away, you can definitely see the puckering.

When I posted a picture of this piece all framed up on FB, any number of fellow embroiderers were appalled by the puckering and insisted I had the right to take it back and ask them to redo it for free. They were so vehement that it made me feel bad, and I began to wonder if maybe I was wrong to accept it as is. 

So the day after I picked it up, I took it back, showed the puckering to the woman who had framed it, and asked if she could redo it and stretch it a little tighter, perhaps using some wadding behind it to get a smoother finish. I was very polite, even apologetic for not having noticed the puckering when I picked it up. To my surprise, the woman, who has framed at least three pieces for me and has always been so friendly and nice, was not very polite in return.

She said in an annoyed and rather snippy tone that she would have to charge me to redo it and that even if she did, she wouldn't be able to get it any tighter because she had pinned it as tight as it would go.

I hesitantly, but still politely, asked why I would need to pay for it again when it had not been mounted or stretched correctly the first time. Even more annoyed now, she claimed that nothing could be done about the puckering because it was the fault of the way it was stitched. And she said she couldn't add any wadding behind it because they didn't have any and she didn't even know what it was. 

I knew, of course, that the fault didn't lie in the stitching and that, if stretched and mounted correctly, the piece could certainly be framed more smoothly. But at this point, I felt I was probably wasting my time because if she didn't know what wadding was, then she was clearly not a very experienced framer. And if she had only "pinned" it as tight as it would go instead of stitching it, which is what she had originally told me she would do, then that was probably the issue. 

I decided to just take it home again since I no longer really trusted her with the piece and was unwilling to pay more to have it done incorrectly yet again. For now, it's hanging on my wall, and when I'm not so busy at work (i.e., three to four months from now), I will undo it, stretch it correctly myself, and reframe it.

Really, I should have just mounted and stretched it myself from the beginning, but I don't enjoy that step very much, and I had just thought how nice it would be to have a professional do it for me. But she was not very professional, in any sense of the word.

Needless to say, Michael's has lost a customer for its custom framing. Based on the woman's attitude, I don't think she will personally care. But when I get the piece framed correctly, I may take it back to show the store manager the picture of the original frame job compared to my correctly framed piece so that they can see that it could, in fact, be done better. But to be honest, I don't expect much to come of that, so we'll see if I care enough to go in a few months' time when I finally get around to reframing it. 

From now on, though, I will certainly be stretching and mounting my own pieces, even if I decide to have a custom frame made for it elsewhere.