Christmas baubles, cats and dogs, and finished Monarch 😊

The latest issue (261) of Cross Stitch Crazy is out now so I can share my picture of the cute cover kit:

Designed by Durene Jones, these were so much fun to stitch I did them twice 🤣 and the free gift includes 2 bauble shaped wooden frames too so the finished decorations are ready to go on the tree or in a card with added oomph.

The other day, I was browsing the worldwide web, and I came across the 2019 catalogue of DMC (here). Remember the Vintage Circus range I mentioned in a previous post? Here they are, all 5 together:

Hmm, I`ve just noticed I got the last two with the drapes - there must be something about me that screams "curtain!"...? 😂 Def. not in the `that`s it, no more` sense because my next DMC commission was this set of 6 hoops, 3 cats and 3 dogs:

I loved this set, they`re such clever designs: they only use 1 colour each but utilise both XS and BS in 1 and 3 strands to create depth and even a sense of movement.

Again, I can only repeat myself: these were so much fun to stitch I did them twice... plus a few (few?!? 🤪) more times: 

Finally, as promised, here`s the finished Monarch of the Glen! 😍 In the end, it took 230 hours, 65 days spread over the past 5 months, and it`s already at the framers (I`ll post a photo of the end result too when we get it back). Thank you for visiting my blog, happy stitching! 😊

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

Christmas Eve box

This week issue 325 of Cross Stitcher is out in the UK so now I can share some pics of the Christmassy goodies featured in it. I had so much fun with this trio of designs by Felicity Hall - even opening the envelope and seeing this eclectic mix seemed almost like an early Christmas present! 😊 First up, I got a wee chart of candy canes and hollies, these were to go on shiny gold perforated paper (I was already doing a little happy dance here: it is not often that I get to stitch on anything else but fabric. Don`t get me wrong, I`d choose aida or evenweave any day over paper or plastic but from time to time, it`s nice to do something a little different for a change, and especially if it`s something so small) 😉 Then there was a slightly larger design that said "Christmas Treats" - it was to go on sparkly cream-and-gold aida and I loved stitching with the bright yellows and oranges, it was certainly different from the run-of-the-mill "Christmas colours". Finally, there was the largest of the three, this was to be stitched on bright blue aida (Smurf-blue, to be precise). I thought it was clever the way the design incorporated the candy canes, holly and the orange lanterns of the other two charts, plus added a jolly Santa and a couple of his reindeer to the ensemble. I loved stitching the banners saying "Christmas Eve" and "One More Sleep" and thanks to the nice big blocks of colour, the project grew pretty quickly. I also like the idea of having a special box that comes out every year on Christmas Eve, maybe with some games in it that would keep the children occupied for a little while on the night that seems the longest of them all...?

I only have one picture of the 3 pieces together (because the rest of them are either too bright with the flash or too dark without it and you can never see the sparkle of the gold threads or the perforated paper anyway) but I love how, accidentally, I arranged the 3 the same way the finished items made it into the magazine. Happy stitching, folks!

Sunflowers finished and MORE Christmas

Just a quick post as I promised - for now I have a finished Van Gogh, mwahaha! OK, not exactly as promised - for `tis not framed. Yet. I had every intention of running out today and not returning without a frame but, alas, in my great excitement I forgot that I was skint. So no frame, I`m afraid, until I get some money - in the meantime though, here`s the finished picture:

It took 23 days, on and off, and I can`t tell you how excited I was when I stitched that blue signature last night! 😀 Not only is it my own personal Van Gogh but it`s also the first piece in a very, very long time that I stitched just for myself - and I`m so happy with it I don`t even feel guilty! 😉

In other news, I got my subs copy of Crazy 234 yesterday, with the little Durene Jones Christmas stocking freebies in it - how sweet are these? I`ll def stitch them again because this time I can finish them with the red/green pieces of felt included in the kit and these`ll look adorable on the tree - tee hee, I`m not even thinking about giving them away! What monster have you unleashed, Vincent... 😂

mini-makes

I have been busy stitching large stuff lately, from Indian elephants to the Mother of All Christmas Stockings, but in between these big projects I`ve managed to finish a few smaller designs too, so I thought I`d gather them up and make one decent sized blog post out of them all.

First up, a recent issue of Crazy had this butterfly shaped frame with it as a freebie and I wanted to stitch it as soon as I saw it. My mom was here for a fortnight while the wee man was off school for the Spring/Easter break and I knew she`d go back home in time to celebrate my gran`s birthday so I had the perfect excuse too: I stitched it for her 84th.

While I was working on this, I remembered that there was another white wooden frame freebie in an earlier issue of Crazy, so I dug through my freebie bag and found it, a heart shaped one - I stitched this one for my mom, as a belated birthday present because we couldn`t be together in February.

I`m always pleased when I can give them matching gifts - for Mothers` Day (which is in May in Hungary) I got handbags and chocolate for them - I hope the carefully wrapped parcels survived the journey in mom`s suitcase because they can`t open them till 7 May. 😊
For Mothers` Day here in the UK at the end of March, I stitched another freebie kit for my MIL,  a card from the Diary of an Edwardian Lady series. It was a bit FK-heavy but even that didn`t matter, I was so elated to be able to start AND finish a project on the same day. 😂

And then sometime around March, there was another freebie kit that came out in WOCS, a Fizzy Moon card that I`d stitched... or, to be precise (and to sound like Thomson and Thompson), HALF a Fizzy...? 😕

Of course, it made much more sense when I saw it made up as a card: he`s peeking from behind a door! 😀

Apropos teddies: the other week I saw a random advertisement on my page from DMC and it looks like their new printed cross stitch kit range is up and running. I stitched this Tatty Teddy from their Me To You series and I have to say, this has been the most joyful way EVER to stitch a Tatty Teddy because for the first time, I didn`t have to bother with the BS-heavy fur as I only had to sew the present with the ribbon and those few flowers. 😁

I`m not a great fan of printed cross stitch per se, I think it`s very hard to be exact during the printing process and my OCD flares up when I see out-of-line... lines, I guess, but I have to admit that this is the quickest and easiest way to have a framed Tatty Teddy picture on your wall while feeling that sense of achievement that you get from a finished piece that you have stitched yourself. 😉
Have a lovely Easter weekend, people, and happy stitching!

chandeliers - Cross Stitch Crazy 220

The new issue of Crazy hits the shops tomorrow but I got my subs copy a couple of days ago and decided this morning to tear myself away from the latest commission (it`s a Maria Diaz and I`m having so much fun with it, it`s hard to put it down!) to share some pics here of the chandeliers I`d stitched a few months ago. They were designed by my Technical Editor, Fiona Baker and were, in a way, an experiment, to see how jewellery beads would work - as opposed to the more customary Mill Hill beads that we usually see on cross stitch projects. I`m happy to report that the large beads were great fun to work with: I enjoyed that I didn`t have to worry about the needle size and also the challenge of finding the best way to secure them to the fabric so that they`d stand upright and glimmer as they`re supposed to. And I`m glad to see that - with the exception of one or two rebels that must have fallen on their faces in transit, lol! - I`ve succeeded. :)

I love the finishes too, these metallic hoops look great! :)

And since this is Cross Stitch Crazy, the only magazine that publishes the stitcher`s name, I can have my 15 minutes of fame too:

Not to mention that - albeit anonymously this time - I provided another pic for this issue: the pub signs I stitched for Twilleys of Stamford are among the recommended kits in the Sherlock Anne section of the magazine - yay! :) Happy stitching, folks!

mandala cushion - Cross Stitcher 308

Out now in the UK shops is the latest issue of Cross Stitcher with this gorgeous mandala cushion (yes, a cushion. I see a theme developing here!) by Felicity Hall. I stitched it in April-May and if I`m honest, it wreaked havoc with my OCD that I couldn`t stitch the complete design, only a section of it (and even that wasn`t bang on a quarter or half) but I loved the colours and how quickly it grew. I stitched it on 20 count evenweave, 2 over 2, which meant the crosses were the size of peppercorns, so it built very rapidly (the magazine estimates the stitch time at 32 hours but in fact it was only 23, which makes it, I think, an ideal last-minute wedding, birthday or housewarming present).

I only have a few progress pics for this one: since stopping every 5 hours wouldn`t have made sense here, I rather just took the occasional break and a photo when I started to add a new colour.

And would you believe it, as it turns out, all the while I was stitching it upside down! :D

Lesley Teare`s cottage teapot and some Twilleys

Well hello, peeps - the weary traveller has returned. ;) The holiday was great and a lot has happened since then too: firstly, the shoe sampler I`d teased you with in my last post got bumped up into a later issue of Collection; at the same time, I stitched a cute ties (as in `neckties`) alphabet by Rhona Norrie for Cross Stitch Crazy that, it seems now, will be in next month`s WOCS; however, there is the cottage teapot that was supposed to be in that issue and is now brought forward to 242 - and if you think you`re confused, imagine how I manage to follow all this, I who actually have to think for long minutes every morning about what day of the week this is.

So the cottage teapot. What can I say? Dream project. So much detail to keep it interesting, not an overwhelming amount of colours or backstitch and it`s cute to boot, what more does the stitcher need? Hehe, maybe that`s why it`s this month`s Stitcher`s Challenge...? ;) It took 48 hours to complete and I loved working on the evenweave, plus I distinctly remember that the BS on the roof felt positively therapeutic. So all in all, good memories - and a wonky photo:

Luckily, there`s a much better one in the mag (love the pink mat, I`d never have thought of choosing this colour but it complements the flowers on the handle beautifully):

And apropos my wonky pics vs. professional photos: yesterday I had a look at the Thomas B. Ramsden site here to see if any of the projects were available yet that I`d stitched for Twilleys of Stamford - and there is an abundance of them! So here`s a wee photo album and for comparison`s sake, I chose the worst of my lot, sometimes the back of a project or a pic that was taken in pitch dark, just to accentuate how much better the other ones are. ;) Hope you`ve all had a great Spring break, happy stitching! :)

Clearly (?), here I was experimenting with taking photos of phone cases out of focus...

Ah, that`s much better!

The back of my perfume bottles...

... and the finished article

My two pub signs in the twilight...

... beautiful in their frames

Two little sweet pea designs...

... turned into two sweet (pea) hangers

A pair of designs entitled Weekend and Weekday...

... and this is what they look like with the backstitch detail added

A wee tapestry for a change ;)

`Lush Meadow`

And, finally, a larger tapestry (the wee man`s there for scale, lol)

And the beautiful end product, a rose cushion :)