Monday 29 January 2018

koalas - The World Of Cross Stitching 265

Well, it`s been a long wait (I stitched this piece in August last year and it`s almost February 2018) but my cute mom-and-baby koala pair is finally in print! Woohoo! 😍
This lovely realistic design by Amanda Butler took 55 hours to stitch (hmmm, as I`m typing this, I just happened to look at the magazine and it says 65 hours. Strange. Makes one wonder why I have to time myself if it`s only used as a ballpark figure but hey..) 😉 So anyway, it took "roughly some time" to stitch and I`m so pleased I can finally see the finished picture in WOCS 265. 😊


I only took a few progress pics along the way because, frankly, they looked a little creepy until the eyes got stitched 😆 but after that they started to resemble their own gorgeous selves (and the baby`s "rude" toe cracks me up every time I look at it!) 😂 And now, I`d better get back to my penguin - yep, back to Christmas stitching... after all, as I have just said: it`s almost February! 😉 #what12days #12MONTHSofChristmas

12 hours

21 hours

27 hours


40 hours

55 hours

Friday 12 January 2018

fluffy Spring lambs - Cross Stitch Gold 144

This week issue 144 of Cross Stitch Gold is out in the UK shops and I was pleased to see my cute little baby lambs on the cover. 😊


This design by Clare Buswell was such a joy to stitch - I mean, just look at those faces! 😍 Plus, I love daffodils - luckily for me, there are millions around where I live so from February to April, there`s a sea of cheerful yellow flowers near our house. I also loved the subtle shading of all those lovely greens - some of them were cross stitched in 1 strand for a lighter effect. The project took 53 hours to finish and I only took a few progress pics because there wasn`t such a great big difference between the stages.





And here they are, nicely framed in the mag: I think this nice, crisp white frame is ideal for an image that`s so quintessentially "Spring", and the pale yellow mount accentuates the daffodils splendidly:


Also, this was the first time I used Madeira Lana thread; it reminded me a little of the threads that were in that Riolis kit of a Dachshund that I stitched for my uncle a few years ago. The lambs got fluffed up (?!?) in-house, so I was very curious to see the end result... OK, if I`m honest, I can`t tell the difference between my pics and those in the magazine but to be fair (both to the thread and to the person who "attacked" my lambs with a brush), I was expecting a more radical change, something that would transform my little white cross stitches into this:


So compared to my expectations, the end result is not that spectacular but it`s undeniable that one can tell the difference, i.e. that these are not cross stitches in mere white stranded cotton. I took a couple of close-ups of those areas, hope you can see them OK and until next time, happy stitching!




Saturday 6 January 2018

City of Romance and some glasses cases

Happy New Year, everyone! First blog post of 2018, woohoo! :) Issue 327 of Cross Stitcher has just come out and lookee what`s on the cover: the Emma Congdon design I stitched a few months ago.


I loved stitching this City of Romance: loved the theme, the colours, the blocky stitching, the lack of backstitch, everything. You know that feeling when you enjoy a project so much that even when it`s finished and you`re already working on something else, you still have flashbacks of yourself stitching this one, and the memory makes you smile? That. ;)

10 hours

20 hours

30 hours

40 hours

50 hours

60 hours

70 hours

83 hours - finished! :)

Now that Christmas is over and my parents have received their presents, I can also show you the 3 glasses cases I`d made for them. My mom got 2 with bears (one for distance, one for reading. Glasses, not bears) and for my stepdad, I stitched a manly Spitfire:




I also ordered 3 pairs of those springy metal things that you sew in the top of glasses cases so that the glasses won`t just fall out - but uncharacteristically for me, I guess I never read the Ebay ad properly because a few weeks later, 3 lots of FIVE turned up from Hong Kong, so as soon as I have time, I might go into mass production of glasses cases. (It might be a while though. I had my work cut out with these three, if I`m honest). But I`m quite proud of the end result and what`s more important, my parents were very happy with them too:


And I`m especially chuffed with the spring action, as demonstrated here by my little hand:


Thanks for scrolling down all the way here, happy stitching! :)