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) 😉

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lovebirds, princes and fairies

Now there`s a title I never thought I`d write - sounds a bit like a collection of fairy tales, doesn`t it? But no, it`s just a list of some of the cross stitch pieces that have been published lately. First up, Lucie Heaton`s cute little fairy gift tags that are the free gift with this month`s Cross Stitch Crazy (241):

They were a lovely quick stitch, a very enjoyable day-off from the larger project that I was working on at the time, and the finished tags look super sweet:

Next up is issue 146 of Cross Stitch Gold: the free gift in this magazine is mine too, a sparkly bookmark to commemorate the upcoming royal wedding.

And finally, in the same issue of Gold is this gorgeous pair of parrots (both the lovebirds and the bookmark were designed by Fiona Baker). I enthusiastically started to take pictures of this project every ten hours, thinking it`d take much longer but those bands of oranges, yellows and greens were so satisfying to stitch that I simply couldn`t put it down and it grew surprisingly fast. Still, I have a few pictures for this one, hope you`ll like them and until next time, happy stitching! 😊

10 hours - 1 bird

20 hours - 2 birds

34 hours - XS finished

37 hours - BS detail added

feathers cushion

Issue 329 of Cross Stitcher is also on sale this week and in it there`s Felicity Hall`s cushion design, featuring 20 feathers with intricate backstitch detail. I`m not going to lie, this is not for the faint-hearted or those who can`t stand backstitch - some feathers have half a dozen different shades of BS added but if you finish them one feather at a time, it`s less daunting and definitely manageable. And the end result is worth it: I like the contemporary feel of this cushion and the colours seem to pop on the linen that (in case you can`t tell from my dodgy-as-usual photos) reminded me of the darkish teal-ish shade of a snow cloud. I tried to take a few close-ups too but the backstitch detail is almost impossible (for me, that is) to capture but I hope you can see them alright. Happy stitching!

Art Deco ladies

Issue 266 of The World of Cross Stitching is out now and in it is a picture of two ladies strolling in a park, resplendent in their Art Deco elegance. The original artwork is by Claire Coxon and I thoroughly enjoyed stitching this project - it didn`t take long to finish and yet it has an impact, wouldn`t you say? It was fun working on the aida and although there`s quite a lot of fiddly backstitch detail, the whole design was small enough so that I could finish adding these details before they drove me up the wall 😂 I only have a few progress pics for this smallish project, hope you`ll enjoy seeing them and happy stitching! 😊

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10 hours

19 hours - love the ghost legs in this one! 😄

32 hours - finished 😊

And nicely framed in the magazine 😍

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

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55 hours

fluffy Spring lambs - Cross Stitch Gold 144

This week issue 144 of Cross Stitch Gold is out in the UK shops and I was pleased to see my cute little baby lambs on the cover. 😊

This design by Clare Buswell was such a joy to stitch - I mean, just look at those faces! 😍 Plus, I love daffodils - luckily for me, there are millions around where I live so from February to April, there`s a sea of cheerful yellow flowers near our house. I also loved the subtle shading of all those lovely greens - some of them were cross stitched in 1 strand for a lighter effect. The project took 53 hours to finish and I only took a few progress pics because there wasn`t such a great big difference between the stages.

And here they are, nicely framed in the mag: I think this nice, crisp white frame is ideal for an image that`s so quintessentially "Spring", and the pale yellow mount accentuates the daffodils splendidly:

Also, this was the first time I used Madeira Lana thread; it reminded me a little of the threads that were in that Riolis kit of a Dachshund that I stitched for my uncle a few years ago. The lambs got fluffed up (?!?) in-house, so I was very curious to see the end result... OK, if I`m honest, I can`t tell the difference between my pics and those in the magazine but to be fair (both to the thread and to the person who "attacked" my lambs with a brush), I was expecting a more radical change, something that would transform my little white cross stitches into this:

So compared to my expectations, the end result is not that spectacular but it`s undeniable that one can tell the difference, i.e. that these are not cross stitches in mere white stranded cotton. I took a couple of close-ups of those areas, hope you can see them OK and until next time, 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. ;)

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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! :)