Blue Geisha

Last Christmas I spent ages looking around for the perfect pattern to stitch up for neighbour as a Christmas present. I found this pattern in a magazine full of beautiful Joan Elliott designs, and knew I had to make it.



It is such a beautiful pattern! I think there were about 40 colours in this, and it took around 2 months of on and off stitching to complete. Is mostly all full cross stitch, but with a few quarter stitches around the face and hands.



She was so much fun to stitch and watch come to life. I tended to work through this design one colour at a time, which helped me find the pattern easier to follow. If you can get hold of a copy of the Joan Elliott Ultimate Collection magazine I really recommend you buy it. It is full of absolutely beautiful patterns, and I wish I had the time to make every pattern in it!!



And finally, here's a picture of the finished cross stitched all framed and ready to go.

This has been one of my favourite pieces to make, and I am still so happy with how she turned out :)

Vicki x

Embroidered Hankies

For Christmas I decided to embroider some hankies for my Nan. I bought Aimee Rays awesome Doodle Stitching books earlier in the year and loved pretty much all the designs in the book, so it was a pretty easy to find patterns I wanted to stitch. They took two evenings to stitch up, and are done using two strands of thread with backstitch and satin stitch. I drew the patterns on with a pencil, tracing the pattern from the book. Here's some close up shots -

I think this cat one is my favourite of the bunch :) ^^

(I actually have the same initials as both my Nan and Mum).

These were really fun to make, and very quick to stitch up. Will definitely be making some more :)

Thanks for reading, Vicki x

Tinkerbell Mini Cushions

Hii. So yet more Disney stitchery is appearing on my blog!! My friends granddaughter loves Tinkerbell and the first cushion was made for her. As she is quite young I didn't want to make something and just frame it, so thought a cushion would be a bit more fun and colourful.

I found the pattern on ebay and loved it and made up the pattern for the 'R'. After I finished the cross stitch I mounted it onto a piece of felt. As I can never leave the reverse side of my work blank, I stitched her name onto the back and added some sequins for a bit of extra sparkle. I then blanket stitched the two pieces of felt together. The cushion is stuffed with toy filling.

So, immediately after I finished this one and posted on my facebook, I was asked to make another one!! My Aunt commissioned me to make one for my cousin, who also loves Tinekrbell. I changed the colours of the flowers for this one, as I don't like to make things that are exactly the same. Charted out an 'M' for the front as well.

This cushion was then put together in the same way as the first. As it was a Christmas present I was asked to stitch 'Xmas 2011' into the back. They were actually pretty quick to stitch up and a fun pattern to do :)

Here's a close up shot of the first design so you can see all the details -

Thanks for reading, Vicki xx

Thomas Kinkade Cross Stitch

Soooo, yet again I have been dreadful with updating this blog. I was stupidly busy with stitching over Christmas and time just slipped away. I'm working on a pretty big blackwork commission at the moment in quite a short time frame so not much free time for blogging I'm afraid. Hopefully will get the chance to update this blog with all my latest pieces and show the amazing crafty bits I got for Christmas at some point soon. Having a brief sewing break for half hour so thought I'd do a quick blog about one of the Christmas present I made this year. My Mum is a huge fan of the painter Thomas Kinkade and she has wanted one of his pieces of artwork for years and years. I've been meaning to stitch her up a Kinkade piece for a while now and this Christmas I finally got around to doing one :) I found the kit for 'Evening Glow' on ebay. I had been searching for a kit I liked for weeks and finally found this one.

It was a printed canvas kit, so the picture was already on the aida material. It came with a chart, which gave a pattern for how you could embellish the picture with a variety of cross stitch, half stitch and back stitch using 1, 2 or 3 strands of thread to create a more 3d feel.

The great thing amount this chart was that you could add as many or as few embellishments as you wanted. I decided to pretty much stick exactly to the pattern on the chart, and once I had completed that, I added bits that I thought would make the piece stand out a bit more. This was really fun as I could just stitch what I wanted as I went along. I also stitched the artists signature into the corner.

The kit came with a load of blending filament. This was thread that I had never used before and I have to admit I was a bit apprehensive amount using it, as I have never really been found of using metallic threads. This turned out to be totally different to what I was expecting. It was much smoother than metallic threads, and although when you came to the end of the length of thread you were stitching with it was starting to fray slightly, for the most part it was incredibly easy to stitch with and gave a fabulous sparkly result. I would definitely use it over metallic thread in other projects that I wanted to add a bit of sparkle to.

Apologies for the rubbish phone camera picture, but this is the only shot of it I have were you can see just how sparkly the blending filament made it :) I had great fun stitching it up, and couldn't wait for Mum to unwrap it on Christmas day :) Thanks for reading, Vicki x