#Minnesota family begs for return of cross-stitch heirloom

A mix-up at an estate sale sent a precious piece of one Minnesota’s family history out the door — grandmom’s giant cross-stitched map of America — and now they’re desperate to find it.

It took Rae Elizabeth Kellgreen more than a year to painstakingly create the item — a 3-foot by 2-foot-tall cross-stitch of the United States.

The work includes every state and every capital except Topeka, which was left out by accident, her grandson, Tyler Redden told KSTP.

If a cross-stitcher makes a mistake, they have to start over, so Kellgreen had started the project with the East Coast “because she knew that was going to be the hardest part,” Redden said.

“If she was going to mess up, it was going to be over there. So she started stitching it from the top right and kept going down, knowing that it would get easier as she went,” Redden said.

Kellgreen completed the work in 1990 and wanted to submit it to the state fair until she realized she’d left out the capital of Kansas.

So the work hung in her living room until her death in August. It was accidentally sold during a subsequent estate sale for just $10.

“This cross stitch is so important to my family,” the grandson told the station.

“It was the piece that, you know, the centerpiece in her living room for the three decades before she passed.”