Cross Stitcher 330

Yesterday I bought the latest issue of Cross Stitcher (the first thing to go into my trolley, this purchase was the highlight of my food shopping trip). Not that I`m obsessed with cross stitching. 😂

It turns out I have 1,5 projects in this magazine (I didn`t stitch the notebook cover). However, the two floral banners on the spines of the folders are mine:

Usually, the paperwork accompanying magazine commissions contains every detail - from the fabric count to the number of colours used - but for some reason, Cross Stitcher never puts the designer`s name on the form. Actually, I quite like it though: I enjoy guessing by the style of the chart and then get a thrill when I see the name in the magazine. So it seems, this month I got the Emma Congdon Special: both the stationery set and the globe on the cover are her designs.

I loved, loved, loved working on that globe! Emma Congdon is already in my good books because of her hardly ever using backstitch on those nice big blocks of colour where you can just let your needle fly, and I also like her signature lettering that is present on this adventurer`s globe too. The grass and flowers make the foreground quite busy so it`s worth taking some time marking the chart, methinks - it saves time in the long run. So that`s it for the now - hope y`all have a very happy Easter with lots of chocolate eggs and stitching (not necessarily at the same time) 😉

8 hours

 

20 hours

30 hours

44 hours

lovebirds, princes and fairies

Now there`s a title I never thought I`d write - sounds a bit like a collection of fairy tales, doesn`t it? But no, it`s just a list of some of the cross stitch pieces that have been published lately. First up, Lucie Heaton`s cute little fairy gift tags that are the free gift with this month`s Cross Stitch Crazy (241):

They were a lovely quick stitch, a very enjoyable day-off from the larger project that I was working on at the time, and the finished tags look super sweet:

Next up is issue 146 of Cross Stitch Gold: the free gift in this magazine is mine too, a sparkly bookmark to commemorate the upcoming royal wedding.

And finally, in the same issue of Gold is this gorgeous pair of parrots (both the lovebirds and the bookmark were designed by Fiona Baker). I enthusiastically started to take pictures of this project every ten hours, thinking it`d take much longer but those bands of oranges, yellows and greens were so satisfying to stitch that I simply couldn`t put it down and it grew surprisingly fast. Still, I have a few pictures for this one, hope you`ll like them and until next time, happy stitching! 😊

10 hours - 1 bird

20 hours - 2 birds

34 hours - XS finished

37 hours - BS detail added

feathers cushion

Issue 329 of Cross Stitcher is also on sale this week and in it there`s Felicity Hall`s cushion design, featuring 20 feathers with intricate backstitch detail. I`m not going to lie, this is not for the faint-hearted or those who can`t stand backstitch - some feathers have half a dozen different shades of BS added but if you finish them one feather at a time, it`s less daunting and definitely manageable. And the end result is worth it: I like the contemporary feel of this cushion and the colours seem to pop on the linen that (in case you can`t tell from my dodgy-as-usual photos) reminded me of the darkish teal-ish shade of a snow cloud. I tried to take a few close-ups too but the backstitch detail is almost impossible (for me, that is) to capture but I hope you can see them alright. Happy stitching!