Christmas gnomes

Christmas gnomes, Tomte, sprites....whatever you want to call them.... are so popular this year and are everywhere....even cross stitching! I decided follow the trend and stitch the Christmas gnomes bookmarks that I designed for World Of Cross Stitching magazine issue 286......

.....they were so much fun to stitch! (They were fun to design too!)  As you can see from the picture above, I couldn't wait to start the back stitching just to have this little gnome's face come to life! I changed the colour of his little suit because ....well you can do that sort of thing with cross stitching and because the recipient loves blue....

The kids (who are not really kids but are all grown up, but still kids to me!) always get a book as part of their Christmas and this year will have a little Christmas Tomte bookmark to go with the book. This one with a more girly colour scheme is still in the hoop, bit shouldn't take too long to complete...

Next on my to-stitch list is one of my Highland Cows (or heilan' coos as they are known as in Scotland!) designs from Cross Stitch Crazy Issue 263....

...but I'm having trouble deciding which one to stitch first!

Until next time....happy stitching!

Rhona

A sparkling, sequined finish!

These four little Christmas characters are popping in to say 'Hi!'.....

At last....after much grumbling and moaning (with a few unsavory words thrown in too!) I have a finish! 

This was certainly not the pleasure to make as the other stockings have been. I had lots of problems with this stocking and took lots of pictures to show how badly off each piece was, but have decided that I will concentrate on the good and show you just the finished piece (who wants to hear anyone moaning and complaining at this time of year!) So here are the cast of characters that make up the stocking....

.....hundreds and hundreds of sequins and beads....

 ....a little 'handmade with love'  label from my stash....

....and baby's name embroidered on the top (I wasn't going to show her name, but since her mama has it on social media there's no privacy issues)...

...... a plain white lining (no pictures as it's a bit boring!)....and we have a finished stocking....

This certainly was a labour of love but I'm glad it's done and am pleased with the finished stocking.

Here's the details of the kit...

Manufacturer - Design Works

Kit name - Winter Friends  #5260J

Finished size - 18 inches

Would I make another felt stocking? Absolutely - but not using this brand! I personally prefer the Bucilla kits and feel they are made to a much higher standard.

Anyway, now to parcel this sparkly stocking up and send it on to it's new owner, just in time for Christmas!

Until next time.....happy stitching!

Rhona

A wolf and a felt bear

Doesn't that title sound like it could be the start of a joke? A wolf an a felt bear walked in to a bar... lol!

Anyhoo, cross stitching has taken a bit of a back seat since I have a deadline for the felt stocking that I'm making. I have worked a bit on Winter's Lace though, and have some more of the wolf emerging.....

....he has some eyes now, so doesn't look like some sort of  crazy zombie wolf anymore! I have broken the cardinal rule of stitching though, and haven't been taking my stitching out of the q-snaps......I'm such a rebel (or maybe in all honesty, that should just be 'lazy stitcher'!)

I'm slowly getting there!

Since Christmas is fast approaching, my main focus has been to get on with the felt stocking for sweet baby R's first Christmas. After my first problems with the printed design not matching up, sadly things haven't gotten any better. I cut out the bear which was one of the printed pieces of felt and lined it up with the lines indicated on the blue background.....only to find that it didn't match with the lines on the snowman ......

....line it up matching the lines on the right hand side and you're left with the line showing on the left hand side...

Of course, these lines should be hidden when you stitch each piece. What to do? Re-draw the piece so that it fits and buy some felt to make a new bear, or jiggle the poorly fitting one to make it fit and try to disguise the faults with some sequins and beads?  I haven't quite decided what to do. All I can say is, so much for this being a quick and easy project! 

Fingers crossed that next week's update will be a it better with a lot more to show.

Hope you are having better luck with your stitching projects than I am!

Until next time....happy stitching!

Rhona

Felt, sequins and a new wolf!

It's a typical November day here....cold and raining, which means terrible for getting good pictures as the light is so poor. On the flip side, it's the perfect weather to stay inside and stitch :)

I managed to get a bit of the felt stocking done while I was waiting for the replacement felt from Design Works. They were true to their word and sent out the felt really quickly. I cannot fault them for their speed.......but (you knew there was going to be a 'but' there, didn't you?!!) when the replacement piece arrived, it too was the wrong size.  I decided just to get some tracing paper and make a new template for the piece so that I could get on with making this stocking in time for Christmas. This is the bottom part....I still have to make the template for the top....

The seed beads and sequins are fiddly, but oh so pretty!

I emailed Design Works and explained to them about the fabric being the wrong size again, and told them that I was able to make a template and use the new piece of felt etc, etc and that I was emailing them just so they knew about the fault with their kit. Their response didn't address this point at all. Kind of disappointing. 

I also managed to get a few stitches (and I do mean a few stitches) in Winter's Lace. .......

....now we can see the start of another wolf. I keep thinking that this design isn't stitching up very quickly.....guess it's because I keep working on other things :) Ah well.....there's no rush to get this finished, whereas there is a rush to get the stocking done as Christmas will soon be upon us!


Until next time.....happy stitching!

Rhona

Another felt stocking!

I couldn't resist buying (yet another!) felt stocking kit! I can see why some people become obsessed with them and collect the different designs available....they are addictive!

Those of you who are long time followers may remember that I have done a few of these felt stockings over the years....

...wow....even more than I remembered! So the first three pictures were ones I made for my daughter and her two room-mates at university. I bought the three kits and thought that I would have them stitched up in no time....little did I know how much work went into making each kit! Nieces, nephews and even my son-in-law were gifted these stockings over the years.  Now the owner of the very top pictured stocking has become a Mum, so it seemed fitting that I make her beautiful baby girl a stocking of her own. I wanted something that would kind of match her Mum's stocking and when I saw this in my local craft store, I just had to buy it....

Doesn't it look cute? I thought the blues in the design matched the blues in the original stocking.

It doesn't look as complicated as some of the other ones that I have made and I was really looking forward to starting this new project. The other stockings that I have made were all made by Bucilla , this one is by Design Works. But.....what a disappointment this kit is.....only some of the design is printed on the felt whereas the Bucilla kit had everything printed out. The main body of the stocking is printed  but the smaller pieces are not. I ended up tracing the design so that I could  figure out how to transfer the design onto the smaller pieces of felt (FYI freezer paper does the trick!).....

Here's the diagram of what's in the kit for each piece that you have to cut out...

So this kit is going to take much longer to make! So, the main parts of the stocking have the areas printed on the felt, so you basically just snip and stitch....luckily I didn't snip and stitch because I discovered this.....

The printed pieces don't match up! The white felt is too short.....9mm short! There's no way to disguise that big a difference. I sent an email to Design Works to let them know of this mistake in their kit and to see if they had any suggestions of what to do and they replied within the hour. So I can't complain about the speed of their customer service. They have promised to send me another piece of the white felt that, fingers crossed, will be marked correctly and I can then get back to making the stocking. 

Hoping your week is going better than mine! A big thank you to everyone who pops along and reads this blog, your comments are much appreciated.

Until next time....happy stitching!

Rhona

The wolf has a body!

It's a typical November day here...dull and dreary....and terrible light to take pictures! 

I haven't done much stitching this week....sometimes life gets in the way of stitching time, but I have made some progress on those wolves in the design 'Winters lace'. This is where I was last time I worked on it....

....and this is my progress so far...

....we have a body and some snow in the foreground!

The light is kind of poor today for taking pictures, the blues in this piece are much brighter than they are showing up.

So, to sum up a very short post today....progress is progress even if it's not very much to see!  :)

Until next time....happy stitching!

Rhona

A Halloween finish!

Phew....just in time for Halloween! So my little Halloween design that I was stitching last week is all finished....and I mean finished, finished :) Yay me!!!

So after you saw some of the Halloween design last week, (click here for how it looked as my 'almost finished' piece) I finished the stitching part then got on with the finishing part.

First off.....cutting the design to shape....

...then deciding on what order I wanted the coloured felt to be, black border with an orange background.....

....or orange border with an black background...

 Ahh, decisions, decisions! So although I liked the orange with the black background better, I realized that it wouldn't show up if I put the banner on my front door which is painted black, so the decision was kind of made for me....black with orange!

Next step was glueing/gluing  (I ended up looking up the spelling as it doesn't look right either way! Now I know that you can use either!) the stitching to the felt....

Trim to size the repeat with the orange felt...

The with a rather long length of black and white bakers twine (which  was so hard to find in the shops!) and a large darning needle....

....we end up with this....

For speed I pictured it on an inside door, it will of course have pride of place, and show up rather nicely, on my black front door just in time for Halloween!

Now I just have to go and buy some more sweets/candy for the trick-or-treaters on Halloween  (please don't ask why I have to buy more sweets/candy 😏 )

Until next time....happy stitching!

Rhona

Some little finishes!

Ahh...that wonderful feeling when the stitching is complete...times three! Well, maybe it should only be two, as I finished one last week , but the other two that complete the set are now all stitched!

The first designs for Christmas cards are stitched and now ready to be made into cards....

....and the one I showed you last week....

I didn't follow the chart exactly (I'm such a rebel! 😃 ) as the half cross stitches for the background were supposed to be done in two strands of thread and I thought it looked a bit too heavy, so opted to use only one strand. I love how it looks a bit softer than on the finished pieces in the magazine.

Here's the set...

All I need to do now is trim the designs down to size and attach them to the card mounts that came in the kit.  Don't you just love those quick projects that look as if they took ages to do?

Until next time...happy stitching!

Rhona

A finish, an almost finish and some progress!

Since it's been two weeks since my last post  (how did that happen?) I have a few things to share with you! I'll do them in the order of the post title. First up is my little finish....

You may recall from my last post that I was itching to have a finish and this free kit that came with this months World of Cross Stitching magazine arrived in the mail box at just the perfect time! The tangle of threads at the top is what happens when you are stitching in the hospital waiting room and can't lay out the threads neatly! A couple of hours waiting for hubby while he had some tests done meant that I got lots stitched and was able to finish off the design the next night. Don't you just love those quick to stitch things? There's some metallic X's in the background design which give just a subtle sparkle (a bit too subtle for the camera to pick up though!)

The 'almost a finish' is one of my own designs that I decided to stitch up...

 Since the title is clearly visible on the top of the chart ( I didn't notice it when I was taking the picture!) there's no point in trying to keep it a secret! This little Halloween banner shouldn't take too long to finish. The stitching is almost complete and since Halloween is just round the corner, I really can't procrastinate with the finishing ....I do want to use it this year!

So now I need to show you the progress I have made on Winter's Lace....

I'm getting there...slowly but surely (with the emphasis on slowly!)

Last of all, I want to share with you my oh-so-cute gift card holders that are  in this month's World of Cross Stitching magazine....

I loved the idea of taking a stitching hoop and making it into a gift card holder and was so excited when the magazine accepted the idea and the designs.  World of Cross Stitching now prints the name of the model stitcher and these designs were stitched by Jan Hazeltine who did a fantastic job with them. Here's a close up of one of the finished hoops...

 Wouldn't they look great hanging on your tree at Christmas?  They have been added to my 'to-stitch' list but I doubt if I'll get them done for this Christmas, my list is too long!

Until next time...happy stitching!

Rhona