latest publications: Collection 264 and Cross Stitcher 307

Yesterday my hubby must have been W H Smith`s star customer when he bought all these stitchy magazines for me. This month is a double whammy again: my sunny cushion was always meant to be in issue 307 of Cross Stitcher, and the shoe sampler, which I stitched around Christmas, was originally planned for the March issue of Collection but got bumped up to 264. So now I have all these goodies to share with you, yay! :)

First, Lucie Heaton`s sunny sampler. This is such a cheerful design with all the beach- and summer-related mini motifs, plus I stitched it on pale yellow fabric, the colour of custard, hmmmmm... so anyway, I was smiling the whole time while I was working on it. Not to mention the sunglasses & bucket combo reminded me of ZZ Top, so I was in quite a giggly mood but that might have been partly due to the general euphoria of knowing that we`d go on holiday as soon as I finished this one. And here it is, a plump little pillow - what is it with me and cushions lately? :O

Cross Stitcher 307

And in the new Collection, there`s the Jenny Barton shoes sampler that I stitched last December; originally, I wasn`t going to work around the Christmas holiday but I couldn`t resist this one: if you like stitching big blocks of colour that grow quickly, this is a dream project! :) I finished it in 99 hours and since I have loads of 5-hourly progress pics for this one, I strung them together in a mini-movie, as usual. Thank you for reading my post and happy stitching! :)

Cross Stitch Collection 264

sunflower wreath - WOCS 244

The latest issue of The World of Cross Stitching is in the UK shops now, and in it is the gorgeous sunflower wreath I stitched just before last Christmas (I should have said Christmas last year. Now I`ll be singing Wham! all day). I love, love, loved this project! One of my first-ever larger-than-card stitches was a bouquet of sunflowers in a vase, also by Susan Bates... lemme see if I can find a picture of it! :)

The Susan Bates sunflowers I stitched for myself in 2011, from WOCS 141

And five years and a hundred issues later, here`s another beauty - and since sunflowers are my favourite, this project has been right up my street! ;)

This project took 47 hours to stitch and I have put my 5-hourly progress pics in a mini-film to save some scrolling time. Hope you`ll enjoy it, happy stitching! :)

Kate Knight cushion - Cross Stitch Gold 130

I`m so chuffed that I can finally share pictures of this gorgeous design! :D I stitched it in February-March - it didn`t take 2 months to stitch (actually, it was a fairly quick one at 70 hours) but there was a little delay due to fabric hiccups. I loved the first one I got, it looked a bit like washed denim but it was evenweave; unfortunately, I realised pretty soon that it`d be more suitable for freehand embroidery. The warp and weft of the fabric was so dense (or fluffy?) that I couldn`t see the holes not only with a white pillowcase on my lap but I actually put a lamp (= a torch in a box with a see-through lid) under it - NB. Don`t try this at home! I still couldn`t see the holes but nothing else on top of that, I almost blinded myself, rofl.

So after a quick discussion with the editors, we decided that since I don`t have 3 or 4 years to finish this one project, we`d better get some `more standard` evenweave from Zweigart - and I`m so glad we did! The new fabric was perfect not only because of the holes were easier to see but also because the darker navy blue was closer to the shade of Kate Knight`s original artwork and it made the colours of the birds and the leaves stand out even more dramatically.

I took this photo to plead with the editors, lol: the one on the left shows the progress after 2 days of stitching;
the one on the right took 2 hours on the new fabric ;) #Irestmycase

I`ve decided not to make a `film` this time: since it only took 70 hours, I only have 7 photos, taken every 10 hours. I thought in this case it`d be pointless to stop after every five because it`s one of those designs where not much seems to be happening between progress pictures. Once the middle section was done and I stitched the first shade of green on the leaves, it was just a matter of going round and round, adding more and more shades in cross stitch and backstitch. So here are my photos first, and finally the picture of the cushion in Cross Stitch Gold, one of my favourite finishes of all time! :)