Anniversary samplers

Hi all,

Firstly apologies for some random old posts that have shown up at the top of your feeds. I've been having a bit of a blog tidy up ready for it to be freshened up by hubby. I'm not sure what I've done but there you go, feel free to ignore them.

Anyhoo, here is the finished sampler. I'm pleased to say it was well received and I'm very happy  with how it turned out.

I made a couple of small changes to it, I wasn't keen on the green thread listed in the key so changed that one for slightly brighter one and added gold beads rather than the white ones suggested. 

I slightly changed the wording to and added my in-laws names and put two dates rather than just this years date as the chart showed. 

I ended up framing it in such a rush as my plan had been to pop into town for the frame and mount on Friday but due to boy being virusy, that completely went out the window. A little more time might of made it slightly straighter!

As I mentioned in my gifted gorgeousness post I used a chart booklet I've had for donkeys years. I did a sample for their 30th wedding anniversary from it too, and whilst we were there at the weekend I took a photo of them together...

Each sampler in the booklet is a slightly different size so it's not my dodgy stitching although there probably is some dodgy stitching in the first one. It's surprising looking back how I would have chosen to frame the sampler differently

If you're curious by the charts came from them - they were from booklet called seven treasured anniversaries by framecraft which I picked up for the bargain price of 20p when Beatties became house of Fraser. 

Anyway, back to stitching on Steph's birthday present...I have less than a week. Eek! 

Thanks for stopping by xx

October gifted gorgeousness

Well the 15th is rolled around again very quickly. So once again it is time for gifted gorgeousness. This SAL is run by Jo of serendipitous stitching. Each month we share what we been working on that is either a gift for someone or stitched using threads, fabric or finishing stuff gifted to us. 

Those of you who read my blog regularly will know that I rarely stitch for me usually for others so it's not always easy to find something that you haven't seen, especially as those who I regularly stitch for read my blog to so I can't get away with many WIP's. 

Anyhoo long ramble over, here is what I'm working on...

It is my in-laws Ruby wedding anniversary on Saturday so I've stitched been stitching them a little sampler. It's from a booklet I picked up many years ago, well at least 10 as I stitched them sampler from it for their Pearl anniversary. I got it for the bargain price of 20p! I think having stitched two of the designs I've probably had my money's worth! 

I did change the design slightly to enable me to personalise it and I shall put in an extra line towards the bottom to put the dates in. It's taken me about four hours to do that bit with at least half of that fighting with metallics and I still have two bands to stitch in the gold yet. I'm planning to just frame it quite simply with a gold frame. I'll try and get a pic of the other when I go up. I'd only been stitching about a year when I did the Pearl one. 

I was very lucky to have a lovely parcel of goodies from Steph this week. Steph sent me A cosy green scarf knitted by her mum, a Christmas mug, candle, Christmas craft magazine with some Dolly pegs to make one of the crafts and a lovely little stitched snowman which I believe is Barbara Anna design and a fizzy moon card just because I had set off the Christmas travelling box and mostly because Steph is a fabulously generous person. 

Here is a close-up of the card and snowman. 

So once this sample is finished for the in-laws I shall be finishing off Steph's birthday present and then Christmas crafting will be in full swing. 

Look forward to seeing what you've been doing with gifted gorgeousness. 

Byeeeeeee!!!!

More Christmas presents

Hi folks,

In an attempt at leaving 2012 tidy blog wise, I'm going to do a quick post to show you a couple of Christmas presents I was given.

I showed you the cute Kokeshi doll Steph sent me in a post earlier this week, well another parcel dropped through my letter box on Friday, as Steph had forgotten to put something in. So out popped this very cute and quirky Rudolph.

I wa also blessed to receive another of Steph's wild women brooches, I love blues/turquoise/greens so this is perfect for me and I wore it out on Friday night when Hubby and I went for a meal with friends. (absolutely scrummy curry)

I didn't get many craft presents this year but I did get this lovely sampler from my in-laws. I must admit that when I saw it was a cross stitch kit, I had a bit of a sinking feeling as they are more your country cottage kind of people and in cross stitch that is just not me! but it turned out to be this fab sampler and below are some rubber stamps Mum brought me.

Hubby brought me an A2 cutting mat to help with my pattern cutting and he also ordered me the rest of my DMC threads to complete my set so hopefully in the not to distant future I'll have a parcel of 151 threads through the door. Good thing too as I need two of them to start a new project!! It will be nice to only have to do a top up thread order every so often :-D

In the non craft related stuff I had a lovely Radley purse, pyjamas, 2 Formula One books, lots of chocolate (but no chocolate orange - so disapointing), socks (of course) Miranda seasons 1 & 2 dvd (Such fun) and McLaren Tooned dvd from Hubby and Mum.

I also had some lovely Cath Kidston stationary from my wonderful friend Sarah, some writing paper and this funky Liberty/Hello Kitty phone case from Mum too.

Well once again thanks for reading and Happy New Year (again)

Thursday ponderings

Hello followers, I hope this Thursday finds you all well in your corner of the world. I thought I'd write a quick blog as I munch my muesli. I had a completely stitch free day yesterday as we had friends for dinner. I'm enjoying stitching the Hydrangea so much, I really missed not stitching it yesterday. I have given myself a computer time limit this morning to maximise my stitchy time.

I recieved a lovely bookmark yesterday a part of crafty lauras gift exchange on bubble from Jo. I have 3 ATC's due to come to me over the next week or so then that'll be it with the exchanges for a while whilst I catch up with birthday cards.

Bookmark from Jo

Day 24: Have you ever made your own pattern? How did it turn out?I've designed a few things over the years. Sometimes it's just a new sampler layout from designs from magazines. I've designed several biscornu. One thing I did for 2 special families was to make them mini samplers for their homes. I got the idea when round at one of their houses I noticed she had several minature pictures in a row above a door frame. I knew I had some tiny wooden frames so designed a mini sampler to fit. its the first time I'd used cross stitch design software, usually I just get out the graph paper and do it like that, anyway heres one of them.



Mini Sampler

Well folks thats me for today. I'm off for a quick gander at bubble. Thanks for reading. x

catch up Saturday

Morning folks,

Today I'm having a bit of a catch up the house as it looks like it is lived in by a gang of tramps with hoover phobia. I was going to wait until the children go back to school but frankly I cannot stand another 4 days of mess so I will be spending time doing this today. not my idea if fun, I'd rather be stitching! So to keep up with the catching up theme I thought i'd post 3 pics that were meant to go on other blogs and didn't quite make it for whatever reason.

Here are the seaside sachets all made up. they're now hung up in the cloakroom. The middle one is a little wonky but hey, it's handmade!

This is the birth sampler I did for my son. It was my most challenging piece as a novice stitcher (day 8's question). It had tweeding, french knots, fractionals and took alot of counting to get the characters in the right place.

finally heres the Stitchlet exchange i recieced from Bubbler Anne.  I love mouseloft kits, they're so sweet and the blue flowers will look great on ATC's too.

Day 17: Have you ever had a project that you loved become ruined? What’s the story behind it?
I've never had a piece of stitching ruined although when I was sewing up the height chart last week the iron was spitting out limescale so that was a bit of a hairy moment. So far anything thats been spilt has come out in the wash and when I was stitching Elvis for Mum, I cut the fabby too small and only left about an inch on 2 of the sides for framing. It was ok and framed up nicely.

So I hope you all have a lovely weekend and I just want to send my best wishes to Laura as she gets married today. have a wonderful day. x

Kerry. x