December House Cross Stitch Pattern and my stitching for a cross stitch exchange.

 Hi everyone, here is the December House Cross Stitch pattern that is one of the posts I lost when I moved back to blogger, some of you may have seen this pattern before. If you would prefer a pdf copy of the pattern contact me on the contact form on the blog or it is available for free in my KoFi shop 

How to download : Click on the image and then save to your computer or take a screenshot.

A completed exchange 

I have recently completed a pin cushion and tape measure exchange from a Facebook group, I designed this little pillow and added some extra goodies for my exchange partner.

I stitched this little Autumn pillow.

 

Adding the year on the reverse.

I cut a small piece of the linen and blanket stitched around the edge  

and then pulled the threads to create this little edging.

I love making these little pillows as they are a quick stitch but make ideal small gifts.

How I made the pillow.

Place the cross stitch face down on a towel and iron gently.  Cut out a piece of iron on interfacing and iron it to the reverse of the cross stitch.

Cut a piece of fabric the same size as your cross stitch piece also with iron on interfacing attached, this gives the fabric some support. 

Place right sides together and hand or machine stitch all around leaving a small gap at the bottom to allow you to turn the pillow to the right side.

Poke in the corners with a bamboo stick or scissors being careful not to poke a hole into the corners. 

Press with your iron.

Fill with fibre fill or walnut shells and blind stitch the bottom.

I usually press the pillow again to finish.

If you wish to make a little Autumn pillow similar to this one then try this free pattern here. 

Until next time, happy stitching!

 

 

January pillow, new mini cat patterns and diamond painting

Hi everyone, I managed to complete the January pillow before the month end.

Remembrance pillow and scissor pouch

Hi everyone, at this time of year I always like to take a moment to remember the fallen in the wars, I started to design this pillow a few years ago and finally managed to get it finished recently.

September and October pillows finished.

The designs were created by Hands on Design and you could get the patterns and the linen, thread and buttons kit from The Fat Quarter Shop as a monthly subscription, however they may not be available now.

I love the September fabric the most, I happened to have both fabrics in my stash which was nice.
Below is a photo of my boo halloween design made into a cushion, you have seen it before but I thought it would be nice to show it next to the October pillow.

There is a written tutorial showing how I made the pillows into a fully finished object (FFO)you can find that on this post.

Boo halloween and October pillow

Until next time, Happy Stitching! 

August pillow and a bee bag

Hi everyone, I am a little late with this monthly cross stitch pattern from The Fat Quarter Shop by Hands on Design, I lost the pattern and managed to find it eventually.

July and Boo pillows finished

Hi everyone, I was pleased to get the July pillow finished, I am loving the red fabric I just happened to have in my stash, I was initially convinced I would struggle with finding the right fabric but was glad it matched the red perfectly.

Cross stitch finishes this week

Hi everyone, I know I said I would show you another shop I visited on my travels recently but I have not edited the photos yet, so for now I am showing you my cross stitch finishes for this week.

Loop Knitting Shop In London, shawls finished and cross stitch pillows complete

Hi everyone, in May I had the pleasure of visiting the Loop Knitting Shop in London and I thought you may like to look inside the store, I am sure you will love it as much as I did!
Be warned there are lots of photos!

Freebie Friday - Valentine Birdie

Hi everyone, its Freebie Friday so I thought I would stitch a quick Valentine project and give you the pattern!

Project bags and crochet pillow

Hi everyone, for many, many years all of my stitching things were basically carried around in a plastic bag, however, someone came up with the idea of project bags and they have really taken the internet by storm, everywhere you look on knitting and sewing podcasts everyone is talking about them!

One for me!

Home Sweet Home, I simply had to do one for myself!

A finish and another free cross stitch pattern.

Hi everyone, I have just finished this little pillow using my free cross stitch pattern in the previous post, I have changed it a little and I will be altering the pattern slightly and resubmitting it to my blog.

I added another flower and altered the green stems slightly.

Here is another small free pattern for you to stitch, I hope you like it!

Happy stitching!



Cross stitch pillow winner!

Hi everyone, just a quick post to announce the winner of my Valentine cross stitch pillow giveaway,

the winner is .........................

Kathy A from Kathy's Sit and Stitch blog here

Congratulations Kathy, please email me in my profile with your contact details and I will post the gift to you within the next 7 days. 

Thankyou so much for all of your kind comments and welcome to all of my new followers. I will be having another giveaway over the next few months to celebrate that I have over 2000 followers on my blog! Yay!   I can't promise when the giveaway will be, but rest assured there will be another before my big annual giveaway in July when I will celebrate 4 years of blogging!

Thanks everyone for your visits to my little piece of blogland!

Happy stitching. 



Cross stitched bag, pinkeep and pillow.

I decided to make my first cross stitched drawstring bag and use a cross stitch design that I finished quite some time ago, the Amitie design is a freebie from Martine's blog here 

The pinkeep and little pillow I finished for a friend some time ago, you can get the small pillow pattern from my blog here

 The free alphabet pattern is available from me via email in my profile.

I show how to fringe the edge in the photographs below.

On reflection I think I should have put the seam down the side, mmmm!

How to fringe the edge

Cut along the fabric edge 

Stitch the fabric about 1cm from the edge in a straight line

Pull the threads like this

until you get to the stitching and there you have it, a nice fringed edge!

Happy stitching!

Paris giveaway winner and look what arrived for me!!!!!!

Hi everyone, apologies for the delay, someone had hacked into my blog and set a divert to another website, this prevented me from announcing my giveaway winner. Thankfully I managed to fix it quickly after searching in my widgets to see if I could find it, sure enough it was there!

I had to do an awful lot of reading on the internet to find out how to solve the problem.

I have a couple of things to tell you about but first up is the winner of my Paris giveaway, I set up the draw using the old fashioned way of folding up tiny bits of paper everytime I recieved a comment.

The winner is ................................

Lynn from Kearnel's Corner blog 

Congratulations Lynn, you get everyting in the photo below!

Please email me your address details and I will send it to you before the end of next week, however, it could be sooner, depends when I manage to get to the post office.   

Thankyou to everyone who entered and a warm welcome to all of my new followers, I did try to reply to everyone, however some of you did not leave me a way to reply to you, but thanks for your lovely comments I really appreciated them all! 

My next giveaway!

My next giveaway will be in the middle of September, it will not be stitch related.

I have been asked by My Memories Suite to host a digital scrapbooking software freebie on this site, I have never used it before until now and all I can say is that it is really easy to use and I now know what all those digital scrapbboking folders were for! lol

I will be showing some photo examples and be giving away one of these Digital Software programmes free to one lucky reader of my blog, so keep your eyes open for that!      

A gift to myself 

Although I love sewing I think sometimes it is nice to have someone else make something for me as a special treat, when I saw this pillow and gift tags (top photo) I decided to do just that!

It arrived a few weeks ago, it was beautifully wrapped and it was like having Christmas in August!

I bought this from a talented blogger who also happens to be called Lynn, she has a beautiful blog at

Teacup Stitches blog here but I bought this from Lynn's Etsy shop here, go check it out, be warned,  Lynn sells her pillows fast!

There is a close up photo of the pillow below, check out the lovely diamante heart, it's so cute!

Thankyou Lynn, it was such a treat to receive this in the post, I know I will order from you again soon!

Talking of pillows, I have made this black and white pillow after taking inspiration from Lynn!

This beautiful lady image was printed on cotton fabric and then embroidered with french knots in lilac and pink to give it some colour, I also put a swarovski crystal on each flower in the corner.

 That's it for this week, happy stitching everyone, until next time! 

My third anniversary giveaway ---- Ooooo La La Paris!

Hi everyone, it was my third anniversary for blogging on the last day of July and here is my giveaway to one lucky winner, I do hope you like it!

This giveaway is now closed!

Designed and created by Lynn B

More photos below.

 

Included in this giveaway:

A cotton door pillow with a transferred image of a Paris cafe

Measurement 14cm x12m  

Two felt strawberry scissor fob pin cushions, one pink and one white

Measurements 3cm across the top and 3.5cm from the top of each strawberry to the bottom.  

One felt needlebook - including three polymer clay pins,

two cupcakes and one pink and black teapot.  

Needlebook measures 6cm by 7cm when closed and 12cm when fully open

The cross stitch design for the needlebook is available in my freebies on my blog.

One pink and black cupcake brooch.

Measures 5cm x 5cm

GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED

  You must be a follower to participate - new followers are welcome.

1) Comment on this post and tell me you are a follower.

2) Take the top photo and post about this giveaway on my blog - another point for doing this. 

The giveaway closes on Sunday evening the 28th August 2011,

the winner will be announced a few days later. 

If you have not had chance to see the winner of my last giveaway for the brooch, please see previous post. 

I stitched black ribbon and one bright pink swarovski crystal to the top of the canopy

to give it a three dimensional appearance.

Cupcake needlebook with silver thread stitches on 32 count black linen

Cute cupcake and teapot pins.

The teapot measures 1cm not including spout and handle, 2cm including spout and handle!  

Swarovski crystal bead to fasten

Cupcake brooch with swarovski crystal trim and black mill hill beads

Who says that strawberries have to be red!

Pretty ribbon trim

Good luck to everyone!

Happy stitching!

Angel stitching arrived at it's destination!

More photo's below.

Hi everyone, a couple of weeks ago I offered to do some Angel stitching for the Stitch Red exchange at the Hooked On Exchanging blog here and Lisa over at Lisa's Cross Stitch Paradise blog here was the recipient.

I used the alphabet from freebie pattern that I have in my stash, unfortunately I cannot remember where I got it from, I think it was a DMC freebie, however if you would like a copy just leave a comment with your email address and I will gladly send it to anyone who asks. Please make sure your comments allow replies as some don't and I have no way of contacting the people who do not have a blog.

For the small pillow pattern I copied part of a large pattern from the swapppons blog, you can see the link in the previous post for this. I also made Lisa some labels for Lisa's cross stitch projects, you can see the tutorial for these here on my tutorials blog.

I read Lisa's blog and noticed she liked butterflies so I decided to make the little butterfly pins with a couple of mill hill beads to finish off. All you need for the decorative pins are a couple of ordinary pins, mill hill seed beads, glue (I used gem tack glue but you can use fabric glue as I know it works) and a charm with a hole through the middle. Just pop a tiny bit of glue at the top of the pin, slide a mill bead on to the pin, followed by a little more glue a charm and then another bead, press them together, leave to dry and your done! 

It was called Stitch Red for the Heart so I chose this fabric for the reverse of the pin keep.  

I stitched the little Hand Made with Love charm on the reverse- 

using tiny blanket stitches.

Here are the labels made in a selection of colours.

I trimmed the top of the pinkeep with a couple of swarovski crystals.

I am pleased to say that Lisa let me know that she loved what I made for her!

I do enjoy stitching these alpahabet letters, they are so quick to stitch and rather effective don't you think?

Stitching news

I have also been stitching on my Little House Neighbourhood this week but not enough to show much progress.

Many years ago I used to make all of my own clothes and I am pleased to say I have now got the sewing bug again. After looking in the shops and not being able to find any summer dresses that I really liked (unless they were very expensive) I decided to buy some patterns and some fabric to make some myself, I am really pleased with the fabric, it is rather pretty and I can't wait to get started - I may even start a sewing blog so watch this space!

If I do decide to start a sewing blog I will need a new name for it, I thought I may call it  

Lynn B's Dressmaking Corner but I would love some suggestions on what I should call it, any ideas out there?    

Must go, husband is wanting me to make some scones today, my sister has also put an order in so I am going to make a double recipe and take them over as a surprise!!!!! Hope she does not see this post before I can get to her home, if you do Ann-Marie get the kettle on! 

Bye for now and happy stitching!

Another box finish and accessories to match

Hi everyone, I have finally finished this box and I am quite pleased with the result, inside there are a little collection of accessories of which you can see in the photo's below.

I have also heard from Lisa that she has received my Angel stitching for the Hooked on Exchange Blog, I will show that in my next post but here is the gift all wrapped up. Lisa said she loved the wrapping and could not wait to see what was inside! I must say, I usually like to make a special effort with the wrapping because I think it makes it more exciting for the recipient.    

A note for Angela who left a message asking about the alphabet pattern.  

Angela, you requested the alphabet pattern, however I could not reply to your email because it was set as 'no reply', you also don't appear to have a blog, if you send me your email address I will gladly send you the alphabet pattern, it is a freebie!

I finished the box in silk dupion and stitched the cross stitch in DMC 964. If you would like the pattern it is a freebie here from the Swappons blog, I have shown the cross stitch piece before but not fully finished until now. If you scroll down to the bottom on the swappons page you can click on the red Adobe PDF link on the right hand side and gain access to the freebie pattern. 

I decided to stitch the accessories using small sections of the pattern and then designed and stitched the silk strawberry trimmed with mill hill beads and pink spider web roses. I am hoping to draw the pattern for the strawberry and upload  to my blog for everyone to have access to it...... not sure when though, hopefully sometime soon.  

Here are the other photo's of the box and contents, I do hope you like them!

You can see my tutorial showing how to make a box on my tutorials blog here, it is not exactly the same inside but I have just added a couple of separating panels to the box below.

I trimmed the box with my favourite swarovski crystals.

I added this little embroidered padded section to the inside lid to hold my needles or pins.

Embroidered strawberry - my own design.

I made the butterfly pins after making them for another gift recently, I liked them so much I made some for myself!   

Here is the pinkeep trimmed around the edge with swarovski crystals of course!

I am currently working on my Little House Neighbourhood, hopefully I can show you some progress on my next post.

Welcome to all of my new followers and thankyou for all of your lovely comments!

Happy stitching!