Designed exclusively for the Norman Rockwell Museum, created in America to honor our needlework heritage. Finished size measures 28.5" by 6" on 14 count Charles Craft fabric. Kit includes Charles Craft material, DMC floss, needle, chart, instructions, and color photograph of finished project. Designed by Barbara Bangser for The Posy Collection.

Interior illustration for McCall's, December 1967. Norman Rockwell Museum Permanent Collection, © Norman Rockwell Family Agency.

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Norman Rockwell's painting Home for Christmas (Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas) has come to symbolize Christmas in New England, just as Rockwell intended in 1967. Rockwell wanted the editors at McCall's to identify the scene as Stockbridge in the text - and they did. McCall's reached out to its national audience by adding, "Wherever you happen to hail from - city, suburb, farm or ranch - we hope you will have, for a moment, the feeling of coming home for Christmas."

In addition to photographs taken of the buildings on Main Street, Rockwell drew on a variety of references to create his snowy winter scene. For sky and mountains, he used photos of snow-draped mountains in the Berkshire Hills, Vermont, and Switzerland. For the warm interior glows, he studied magazine images of candlelit country homes. For clothing styles, especially women's coats, he relied on illustrations in a Sears & Roebuck catalogue.

Established in 1773 as a stagecoach stop, The Red Lion Inn has always been the social hub of town. Its windows are darkened in Rockwell's work because the Inn closed down in the winter until 1969, two years after this painting was published. Rockwell's South Street home and studio appear at the far right border. In a window above the market, a Christmas tree glows in a room that was Rockwell's studio from 1953 to 1957. The Old Corner House, which became the home of the first Norman Rockwell Museum two years after the painting was completed, stands at the left border of the painting.

Cross Stitch