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! 😊

sunflowers, tv cushion finish and museum shelf update

Issue 359 of Cross Stitcher is coming out next Tuesday but the digital copy is already available so I thought I`d better add my piccie of the Maria Diaz sunflower fields here before I forget - the way my sense of time is getting warped these days, by the time I remember `next Tuesday`, it`ll probably be mid-August. 🤪

I love everything about this picture 😍, the feel of it, the colours, the fact that it`s a whole field of my favourite flowers, the blue skies, the depth created by clever use of half stitches and even by leaving some of the fabric unstitched... everything! It took 35 hours to complete, which surprised me a little bit for a 22x16 cm picture that uses only 25 colours - I guess I spent a few extra hours on the confetti of the greens and yellows in the foreground and then the backstitch around the petals. 😉 But I def enjoyed every minute of it - so much so that one day I plan to stitch this for myself too.

And while on the subject of making things for myself: I finally, FINALLY, finished the cushion cover that I`d imagined for my cross stitched tv test card! 🤩 I`m really chuffed with it, even if it took me over 5 hours of faffing about, involving everything from searching for bobbins to taking apart and then putting together again the sewing machine. However, after a few hours of struggling, I emerged victorious - I`ll even include a boring pic of the back here because I`m almost as ridiculously impressed with the slip cover (for I would never even dream about tackling the insertion of a zip! 😳) that I managed to sew the right side out as I am slightly awed by my mitered corners at the front - I really can`t stress enough what a great achievement this cushion cover is from someone who doesn`t like to sew! 😂

Finally, I`ve had a bit more time to work on my HAED Museum Shelf 🤗 I`m up to 48 hours and the bottom right corner is starting to look good, especially since I`ve finished Nefertiti and a bit more of the frame 😃 I`ll add the previous photo I took at 22 hours and also what it`ll look like finished, as a reminder 😉 Hope you`re all staying safe, happy stitching! 😊

perforated paper cards, a finish and a new start

Well, it`s been a couple of months but I`m back with a new post - hope you`ve been all doing smashingly in the meantime. 😉

Cross Stitch Crazy 267 is out now in the UK and the free gift is a perforated paper card kit - just the one, mind, so you`ll have to choose between the blue tit and the teapot (both designed by the very talented hands of Durene Jones). I was lucky enough to stitch both, so here they are:

Yesterday, after two months (but in reality, after 60 hours in total), I finally finished Emma Congdon`s tv test card design that I fell in love with as soon as I saw it in Cross Stitcher (issue 349). I already bought the brown fabric to use for the back of the cushion I want to make but knowing me, it might be a while before I have a finished product so I thought I`d better share a pic now, before I forget. 😄

And before you say, `but how long would it take to go round the 4 sides and make a cushion cover?`, first of all, I don`t like sewing and second, I already started on my next project, which is much more fun than sewing boring straight lines... 🙄😉

OK, I`ll be realistic here: it may be a little while before I can show you the finished picture - according to the pattern tracker, I have 200 sts down, 75,000 to go 🤪 but one day, it`s going to be this HAED pic called Museum Shelf. Until then, happy stitching! 😊

HAED Moon Hare - WOCS 232/233

Finally, the long wait is over! Just received my copy of The World of Cross Stitching this morning, and Part 1 of the Moon Hare is in it - yay! I`m ecstatic!

I stitched this in February and March - the magazine says it takes approx. 15 weeks, which is roughly correct if you only have a couple of hours a day to stitch. It took me 252 hours to complete it, and towards the end, with the deadline looming, I had to pull some all-nighters, but it was all worth it and anyway, I caught up with my sleep within days. ;)

This was the first HAED (Heaven and Earth Designs) chart I`ve ever attempted - remember The Starry Night I`d bought about 2-3 years ago? I`ve always loved that Van Gogh painting and in my enthusiasm, I even got the fabric, the colours of thread I`d need... and then I lost my courage. To start with, I even got stumped as to how to organise the 49 different shades - the largest number I`d seen in a design thus far, magazine charts usually use a lot less. And the sheer size of the fabric, I mean, how am I supposed to hold that kingsize sheet in my hand, as I don`t use a frame or even a hoop... So, in the end, poor Vincent ended up in the drawer under the bed.

And then this commission came along: 88 colours on a 22" by 18" piece of aida - nothing like jumping in straight at the deep end, right? And to my surprise, I found that I loved it: no matter how clumsy I felt first with all that extra fabby - I just rolled it up and pinned the top and bottom with two bulldog clips (then did the same on the right hand side too, only I stitched that half upside down):

Similarly, it didn`t matter how many shades of thread I had to juggle - although I quickly discarded the idea of the over-complicated system I`d worked out for Starry Night: it turned out that the easiest way to see through all 88 wee bags of thread is to simply stack them in a tray in numerical order. I also learnt that even if at first it seems a waste of time to mark the symbols that come next, it is something worth doing as it`ll save time in the long run - so I marked the symbols I was about to stitch with bright yellow, then with a darker colour as I completed them. Wanna see my psychedelic chart? :D

I`m glad this hare came along because - I think I`m not exaggerating when I say this - it taught me not only some technical know-how about cross stitch but even some life lessons. I`m glad I took on a challenge that I was first weary of but eventually conquered, and the fact that I succeeded has given me the confidence to start my own HAED... although not just yet, because atm I`m stitching my own (HAED-style!) photo conversion, and I`m glad to say, I`m sailing through it! :D It`s going to be a Twelfth Night cushion cover, I`ll show you when it`s done - in the meantime, here`s Bunny Wabbit`s 252 hours summed up in a minute - enjoy! :)