autumn woodland - The World of Cross Stitching 272

This week the latest issue of WOCS is out and in it is one of my favourite projects to date: Amanda Butler`s stunningly gorgeous woodland walk (a companion to her `Bluebell Woods` from issue 255).

Autumn is my favourite season and a huge part of the reason for that is the glorious range of warm red, yellow, orange and brown colours of the leaves on the trees at this time of year. I`m also very fond of these wee bridges going over babbling brooks, there are plenty of them here in Scotland and this one reminds me of a recent trip to Perthshire, where I took a photo of my son standing on a not dissimilar little bridge just outside Blair Castle. But if I remember correctly, after the vivid colours of the foliage, the next thing I noticed in this pic was not the bridge - probably like 9 people out of 10, I squealed "Bunny!!" too as soon as I saw it. 😂

This project took 82 hours to stitch and I took a progress pic every 10 hours but rather than adding 8 photos one under the other, I put them together in a mini-film (`as usual`, now I can say again 😊). But before showing you that, here`s the fruit of my 1,5 day off last week, a. k. a. private stitching: I decided to personalise my plain green backpack, so I stitched a couple of sunflowers on hessian patches for the bottle holder mesh pockets on each side, and I also made a wee key ring for the zip, using one of Durene Jones`s autumn leaf designs from the latest issue of Cross Stitch Crazy (246). Have I mentioned I loved autumn leaves? 😃 Happy stitching!

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

tree of life, a bit more Christmas and sunflowers

This week there are two new publications out in the UK shops and, in a way, my stitching`s on the cover of both. 😀 One of them is the free gift with the latest issue of The World of Cross Stitching, and the other is this folksy tree of life cushion in Cross Stitcher 322.

As I have mentioned many times before, I love, love, LOVE stitching blocky designs... and folksy designs... and designs with shades of red, green and brown, so this Amanda Butler cushion felt like it was made for me. It grew so fast that I could hardly believe it (have I mentioned how much I love blocky designs? That`s another reason: because you can actually see it grow). It took roughly two weeks and it was one of those projects where I felt sad when it was finished, I enjoyed it so much - from the green blocks to the vines and flowers to filling in the gaps with DMC 352.

3,5 hours

16 hours

23 hours

38 hours

45 hours

58 hours - finished 😊

Deer on the flip side 😁 - love the texture of the dark green leaves` back!

And here it is in the magazine, all made up into a folksy wee cushion, complete with cheerful yellow bobbles:

 Next up, after all the autumn colours, here`s a bit more Christmas: the free gift with WOCS 259 is a set of 3 cute cards, designed by Helz Cuppleditch, of a moggy playing with a stocking, a robin and a cracker.

I like how the cards repeat the snowflake motifs of the stitching:

Finally, in other news: I`m plodding on with my Van Gogh Sunflowers. I`ve been away on holiday and had another commission stitch finished in the meantime (also by Amanda Butler but this is a wildlife pic, just wait until you see it in WOCS, amazing and cute rolled into one!!) so according to my calendar, I`ve spent 17 days so far working on this and I reckon another 4-5 should do it so fingers crossed, by the time of my next post I`ll have it framed...? #wishfulthinking 😂 Happy stitching, peeps!