4 seasons windows - Collection 271

In the UK shops now is the latest issue of Cross Stitch Collection and in it is the Seasonal Windows pic I stitched sometime before Christmas. It`s a Maria Diaz design and I enjoyed working on it a lot because one, I love her work, two, I love 4-seasons pictures and three, it is a really fast-growing project (once the walls and window frames are done, the middle fills out very quickly and there`s hardly any backstitch). The whole project took about 45 hours and as there are not too many colours and no fractionals or French knots, this could be an ideal `first big project` for somebody new-ish to cross stitch who`s ready to tackle something larger.

As I was working on this just before Christmas, I don`t have too many photos, I only took one at the end - but as the evenings were long and dark (they still are, by the way), my piccie turned out darker-than-usual too, so I took one close-up of each of the 4 windows too, these are a bit brighter. But I`ll add the photo from the magazine as well - not only is it much better lit than any of mine, it also shows the finished picture in its frame.

Hope your New Year is promising so far - happy stitching! :)