Cross stitch

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you're supposed to be doing something else. I have been swept away on a tide of cross stitch, and it has yet to deposite me back with my pending WIP's. Because of this I am making little progress with my granny square blanket and the loom beading has been discarded. It hasn't stopped me from looking at reference books on loom beading, though!
I find my cross stitch obsession funny; I would never have seen myself as a cross stitch kind of girl. In the past I have avoided cross stitch because I didn't see the place in my life for twee pictures rendered in thread. All this changed when I saw an Avengers Assemble project, soon I was being pulled down the cross stitch rabbit hole to Subversive Cross Stitch and other such delights.

During half term I found myself using up the last of my patience teaching my middle daughter and her friends to cross stitch. I have to admit that my irritation threshold for repeating myself is very low, thus I make a terrible craft teacher. One of the girls really took to cross stitch so this perked me up out of my grump.Then I decided to cross stitch LO a picture.

I started with the pattern of the girl. My daughter chose her hair and I chose the dress colour. She seemed a bit lonely just sitting there on the Aida so I put a pink border round her, but it didn't look right so I unpicked it. I thought for a bit and chose another one of the motifs out of the magazine and stitched it around the girl. working out the pattern was difficult because I have the attention span of a flea and you need one to count the itty bitty squares. In the end it turned out fine, just a quick bit of centering and it was as if they had meant to be together! In keeping with my cross stitch free life this one will be being framed in an oval frame and hung in my daughters bedroom.

Whilst I was on with the threads I thought I'd have a go at freehand embroidering a bird onto some vintage linens I was given. I have this book from the library called The Stitch Bible which  contains a beautiful blackwork bird pattern that I decided I'd try. I didn't have the correct material so I just started to copy it with my own flourish and this is how it turned out.

I love it! It needs some tweaking around the tummy but other than that I really enjoyed making it.

One of my friends had a beautiful hand embroidered romper suit that was given to her baby daughter as a welcome gift and I coveted it, so much so that I think I'll be making a couple of my own now that I have embroidery skills.

I'm not sure how long this diversion will last as I've been looking through the Craft book I got for Christmas. There are loads of cool things to make in there, next up is probably going to be some tie dying in spirals. Hopefully this avoidance of pending WIP's will end very soon and I can show off my gorgeous new blanket to you all.

Trying out cross stitch.

I've been really hankering after cross stitch for a while now so when I was perusing the magazines in the local supermarket I came across a free kit to make a cross stitched blue tit card.

I love craft, I love birds, what better way to get a cheap thrill than to get this magazine? I know I have a blanket and a bead loom waiting for my attentions but I just couldn't resist!

Even though this was my first ever cross stitch project I found it quite easy. I think I can remember the ladies in home economics saying that the back of a cross stitch should be as neat as the front which made me have a little experiment and then a think about how I was going to achieve that. It was fun, quick and I did it in one evening. Here is the finished project in the little frame it came with.

I did the lines a little thicker by accident, but I like them so they're staying (trust me to go off piste) and I think there was one are two squares that I counted wrong but it hasn't affected the over all picture. Thankfully. I loved this little guy and would love to do more cross stitch birds by this lady, they're really cute. Oh yeah, and here is a picture of the back. It's not as neat as I would have liked but it was my first try!