Forever Friends, more Rome and Van Gogh, snowman on a box and loads of Disney

I don`t even dare look at the date of my last post 🙈 Although if I go by WOXS time, it`s only been one issue... but by Disney time, it`s been 4 or 5 or 6... meh, anyway, here I am again! 😁

So after some delays this month, issue 302 of The World of Cross Stitching is in the UK shops now, and the cover kit is this cute Forever Friends teddy with his little heart: 🥰

My mum says he should have pulled that scarf up a bit to cover his nose 🤣 - I dunno, this seems to be how the majority of people I see in the shops wear their masks, Tesco`s full of these Poirot wannabees in their moustache protectors 😂 Anyway, talking of facial hair: I`ve stitched myself a little Van Gogh portrait to go with my collection:

The chart is from Artecy, it`s part of a Van Gogh sampler, which I might sew one day as a whole OR use the individual smaller designs for mini pics like this (I have more of these wee canvas + easel combos). I am also the proud owner of several of these stitchable trinket boxes (because I kept ordering the wrong size 🤦‍♀️) but eventually, I found the right one for this snowman design by Durene Jones:

I already have another design picked for one of the larger boxes, it`s a tiger head and will look awesome, now I just have to squeeze it in between all the other projects I`ve started or am about to start: apart from the Thea Gouverneur `Rome`, I`ve also started an autumn cottage by Carol Thornton AND I`m just waiting for the fabric to arrive for a fractal lion that I charted for myself *wilfully ignores mentioning other WIPs like the Museum Shelf or Starry Night* Um, but I have a page finish on Rome, yay! 😉

I take a pic with my phone at the end of every day I manage to work on this, so apparently, I`ve had 11 days so far to play with this project since I started it in September. Of course, I would be on Page 2 by now if I haven`t started that cottage, but 1. I wanted something on easy 14ct aida to give me a break from the 36ct linen, and 2. my chart for the cottage is on the Pattern Keeper, whereas Rome is on big A3 sheets of paper full of miniscule squares that I`m marking with highlighters (and as we all know, after a few hours, it`s hard to tell if a circle has a smaller circle inside or a dot 😵😖🤪

Anyway, usually by the time I`d make up my mind which project to continue with, another Disney lot comes in and that`s me sorted 😂 I`ve had a look on the Hachette Partworks website and seen that the images of magazine covers are uploaded (up to issue 19, I think), so I`ve made a little montage of the projects I recognise (the step-by-steps of each character from the 4 big samplers are published over every 2 issues, the rest are various projects from hoops to buttons, from stockings to cards). Hope you`ll enjoy the mini-vid, happy stitching and have a wonderful holiday season - see y`all in 2021! 😊

Immediate Bonanza

It so happens that this month, three of Immediate Media`s titles have one or two of my stitchings featured and since I`m having a rare day off today, I`ve decided to create a mega-bumper-blog-post. I`ll try to rein in my tendency to waffle but please prepare yourselves for lots and LOTS of pictures. 😉

Sticking to their chronological order, first up is issue 253 of Cross Stitch Crazy, with these 8 little cuties:

These Lucie Heaton designs were so much fun, I mean how often do you get to stitch something that takes less than an hour, uses only a few colours and still turns into an adorable teddy? 😉

Still on the subject of cover kits, the free gift with this month`s WOXS is one of the two Durene Jones designs I stitched for issue 279:

Similarly to the double sided snowman I stitched a few months ago, this decoration has a front and back too - and it had a real "Easter egg" in store for me because even though I was looking at the chart for about 12 hours, I only noticed the wee chick hiding there at the very last moment, as I was adding the backstitch. I was grinning like an excited toddler! 😂

The other Durene Jones design in WOXS 279 is this beautiful set of a floral table runner and two coasters. The table runner took about 70 hours to stitch and I loved working on it - Durene is so experienced in making the stitcher`s life easy with her shading so that one can hop from one colour/area to the next with ease.

Having done one corner, I just flipped the fabric upside down and repeated the same motif at the other end:

Finally, I added the border and stitched the two accompanying coasters:

OK, so they weren`t the easiest to photograph (should have taken a panoramic photo perhaps?) but here they are in the magazine, finished with a white felt backing:

Finally, this week Cross Stitch Gold 154 hits the UK shops and in this issue, there`s the gorgeous ladybird by Carol Thornton that was one of the best therapeutic stitches I`ve had in a long time. It took 86 hours to finish but frankly, I could have gone for another 86, just using up one skein of 819, 3865 and 3866 after the other (I thought the ladybird itself would be the piece de resistance, and it was in a way, but I found those big petals surprisingly soothing). Occasionally, I remembered to stop to take a photo and I strung these together in a mini film, from the initial tribal motif 😄 to the gorgeous finished cushion, and I even sneaked in a picture of the back too because I liked how that in itself looked like a pastel drawing or a watercolour painting. Thank you for scrolling all the way down here, hope you liked the pic-fest and happy stitching! 😊

cosy autumn sampler - Cross Stitcher 336

This week the latest issue of Cross Stitcher is out in the UK, and in it is this gorgeous design by Rebecca Spencer that collects all the things we love about autumn in one curl-up-on-the-sofa-under-a-blanket-and-revel-in-the-cosy-feeling sampler. 

While you try to make up your mind whether the teddy is your favourite or that mug of hot chocolate, may I just point out that there`s a sewing machine there too? *squeals excitedly* 😉 And talking about sewing: it`s too late now but I wish I had taken photos before adding the backstitch - as it is, you`ll just have to take my word for it that I had that deeply satisfying feeling you get when after a few well-placed stitches, a splodge of reds and oranges turns into a basket of apples, or a rectangle of blue into the padded back of an armchair. #clever

I have a few close(r)-ups for this project, here they are:

Hmm, that last one`s a bit flash-bleached... anyway, you get the idea. 😉 In other news: some of the DMC projects I stitched a few months ago have been launched now so I can add them to my photo album here. This pair of love birds was a sweet little exercise as the fabric is pre-printed so I only had to stitch the birds themselves and the background is already done. #noice

And around the same time, I stitched these gorgeous flowers too - I`m glad to see the kit is available to buy now. Thank you for scrolling through all these pics, happy stitching!

City of Romance and some glasses cases

Happy New Year, everyone! First blog post of 2018, woohoo! :) Issue 327 of Cross Stitcher has just come out and lookee what`s on the cover: the Emma Congdon design I stitched a few months ago.

I loved stitching this City of Romance: loved the theme, the colours, the blocky stitching, the lack of backstitch, everything. You know that feeling when you enjoy a project so much that even when it`s finished and you`re already working on something else, you still have flashbacks of yourself stitching this one, and the memory makes you smile? That. ;)

10 hours

20 hours

30 hours

40 hours

50 hours

60 hours

70 hours

83 hours - finished! :)

Now that Christmas is over and my parents have received their presents, I can also show you the 3 glasses cases I`d made for them. My mom got 2 with bears (one for distance, one for reading. Glasses, not bears) and for my stepdad, I stitched a manly Spitfire:

I also ordered 3 pairs of those springy metal things that you sew in the top of glasses cases so that the glasses won`t just fall out - but uncharacteristically for me, I guess I never read the Ebay ad properly because a few weeks later, 3 lots of FIVE turned up from Hong Kong, so as soon as I have time, I might go into mass production of glasses cases. (It might be a while though. I had my work cut out with these three, if I`m honest). But I`m quite proud of the end result and what`s more important, my parents were very happy with them too:

And I`m especially chuffed with the spring action, as demonstrated here by my little hand:

Thanks for scrolling down all the way here, happy stitching! :)

It`s beginning to look a bit like Christmas...

Is it August yet? Oh yes, it`s the 2nd - then it`s not too early anymore to put my Santa hat on, tee hee! There are two publications in the UK shops this week and they both signal the start of Festive Stitching Season - yay! 😊

First up, my little Popcorn bear, this month`s free gift with Crazy 233.

He is not TOO Christmassy as such, is he? No, not yet. Apart from that tentative robin, he could be skiing in the Alps for all we know, right? That is, if you don`t use the aperture card... 😉

But here`s something that couldn`t be more Christmassy if it tried: a stocking with an elf and presents in Gold 140:

This lovely Faby Reilly design looks deceivingly smallish in the photo but IRL it is MASSIVE! Here`s how the project arrived:

I didn`t think of measuring the fabric but judging by that IKEA cushion under it, it must have been around 70ish x 90-100 cms. The chart was on 4 (well, 3 and a bit, really) A3 sheets and besides the threads, I also got a summary of the specialty stitches featured in the design.

If you need to brush up on your eyelet sts and spider web sts,
Faby has great tutorials on her website.

So as usual, my first task - being a `hand-held stitcher` - was to figure out how to handle this huge piece of fabric. I had to use my biggest binder clips but these, combined with the weight of the fabric, made the whole thing so heavy that I had to rely on my trusty magnets as well (I have a magnet board that holds my chart and the whole thing swivels on a Lowery frame so this time I just attached the top binder clip to one of my strong magnets and it took the weight off my left hand).

That`s the bottom right quarter of the fabric and those few blue stitches are the middle. Since I want to hold as little fabric (especially stitched, i.e. even heavier!) in my left hand as possible, for as long as possible, I had to get to the rightmost part of the stocking - which meant a wee bit of skipping:

I loved this look btw - it`s a bit like a map, isn`t it? And the `Lego colours` just make it so cheerful! 😊 Once I reached the `toe`, I could really get going. 

10 hours

26 hours

48 hours

Once I started the top half, I could finally take the binder clips off, and as an added bonus, the bits with specialty sts grew really fast because they covered large areas quickly.

Finally, after 88 hours, it was all finished. Excuse the even-more-than-usually badly lit photo - I had to take an aerial shot so I`m standing on a chair here and the flash just couldn`t cope. 😁

Anyway, here`s a much better picture, with proper lighting and the stocking all made up - looking fantastic, even if I say so myself. 😉 Happy stitching!