WOXS 300 bells and gifts, lions and unicorns, Tigger and Dumbo, Mona Lisa and Rome

The three-hundreth (300!) issue of The World of Cross Stitching is in the shops now, so I can finally share Fiona Baker`s two lovely Christmas designs that I stitched a while back:

I love 1) anything Christmassy, 2) designs that combine cross stitch and blackwork, and 3) multi-purpose projects. And since the cute bell and tartan gift designs are to be made into cards that can also be used as tree ornaments, they definitely tick all those boxes for me. 😉

Talking about WOXS - do you remember the girl with unicorn from issue 297? I posted here about Anne Stokes` artwork, translated into a cross stitch chart by Fiona Baker, at the time when the magazine came out - and look who`ve found their way back to me? 😍

I`m so happy to be reunited with them, I`ve already ordered a white frame/grey mat combo - similar to what they used at the photoshoot -, so as soon as it arrives, I`ll just have to wash and iron the fabric and it`ll be ready to go on the wall... to join my lion, designed by Durene Jones, that I`ve also managed to finish recently, yay! 🤗 Here`s my progress video - for once, I managed to place the image roughly at the same place whenever I took a photo, so the last few seconds of the colours gradually filling out the spaces between the black lines look almost like stop motion animation. 😊

As you can see from the last pic, I`ve made some modifications: I omitted the FKs in the eyes and the whiskers because what grabbed me in this design in the first place was its stylised quality, so after some inner debate, I decided not to add the realistic whiskers. And instead of turning the finished piece into a round cushion, I opted for framing it in a hoop, which I bound with dark brown ribbon (with the help of my patient hubby, who held the hoop for me while I went round and round the plain wood for about 20 minutes). 😊🦁

Stop motion animation reminds me: remember these 4 Disney samplers I stitched for Hachette Partworks?

Since they are published in weekly instalments, with one character per every 2-3 issues, each of these 35 characters have to be restitched in a one-colour-at-a-time step by step fashion:

The other day, this cute little stop-motion ad came up in my news feed on Facebook - so here`s 🐘🐘🐘 Dumbo 🐘🐘🐘 from issues 3 and 4, one colour at a time! 😃

What else has been happening? 🤔 I`ve bought a new chart for myself - noteworthy only because I hardly ever do, thinking I`d never have the time anyway, which is still the case, only I couldn`t miss the half price sale at HAED, so... ta-dah! 😆

I have no idea when I`m going to even start this, especially as now that some kinks have been worked out with Pattern Keeper, my Starry Night chart is a go, too! 🤪 Meanwhile, in Rome:

So far, I`ve managed to spend 2 evenings working on this - and 4 (FOUR) days going through my entire DMC collection (several times!!) to try and match the pre-sorted threads that came with the kit:

Don`t laugh at my cushions - I almost never stitch kits so I don`t need fancy needle keepers, etc. 😉 I`m happy to report that it might have taken ages but eventually, I managed to identify all 119 colours of the design, so now that ominous line in the instructions about using them sparingly doesn`t daunt me so much - not that I`m not frugal with my threads anyway, but tangles, etc. happen and when you have 1 length of a colour, that`s not ideal (who wants to be under pressure when they cross stitch, anyway?) 😉 And on that note, I`m off to sew a few more little Xs, thank you for visiting my blog and happy stitching! 😊