My OH laughs when he sees the newsfeed on my facebook page, it’s all quilts, sewing and embroidery! I joined a new facebook page recently called ‘All About Smalls’, it’s nothing to do with undies, just little pieces of embroidery, mainly cross-stitch. There’s some beautiful pieces shown and I particularly love the way they are finished, the attention to detail is amazing. Quite a few of the contributors obviously have quite a selection of ‘smalls’ as they have a ‘seasonal display’, I rather like this idea so I thought I’d make a few over the coming year…

With my first one I decided to make one which could double up as a Christmas card for my OH, I’m hoping he doesn’t decide to do his once a blue moon read of my blog today!

Whilst I was at the knitting and stitching show in Harrogate I kept looking for a little pattern or kit that was suitable but nothing inspired me. Last week I was in Hobbycraft and noticed a few Christmas cross-stitch kits in a display bin. I had a rummage around and found this one for £2, everything included!

It’s taken me a couple of evenings to stitch the design furtively whilst he was packing and preparing for his week away. Last night I decided to make it up. My original plan was to make it into a card and then after Christmas take it apart and make it into a little decoration. However I had a bit of a brainwave. I could make it into a flat ornament and then ‘hang’ it on the front of the card.

I decided to follow the instructions on ‘The Twisted Stitcher‘ website, she has lots of great tutorials on how to finish embroidered pieces. I decided the ‘Mounted Flat Ornament’ was what I wanted.

I chose to lace the embroidery onto backing card, I’m still not a great lover of using glue instead of lacing, particularly with embroideries. This is probably fortunate as I initially forgot to put some batting underneath the fabric to soften the finish, so I had to undo it and start again!

I did use glue for the back though so I could get as flat a finish as possible. I used a lovely green Christmas fabric left over from the fold and stitch wreath I made the other week. I fancied red initially but it somehow looked better with the green fabric. I added my hanging ribbon and then glued the front to the back, popping a book on top to make it adhere neatly.

All I needed now was a bit of trim around the edge. I rummaged in my trims drawer and in my embroidery stash box but couldn’t find anything, so I decided to make a length of cord. My original thought was to use a length of red and green from the kit, I had two 1m lengths left, I tied a knot in both ends, hooked one end over the spool holder of my sewing machine and slipped a pencil through the other end and started turning. It didn’t take long to twist it enough to make a cord. 2m of thread made about 30cm, just enough to go round…it just didn’t work though, I tried gold, I thought of adding beads. Then I hit on the idea of just using red thread, I made a second length of cord with just the red and it works. I used the basting glue that I got for applique for this as it has a very fine nozzle, it’s acid free and it stays on pretty firm.

A little bow on the top was the final touch. I’m really pleased with this and I’m quite looking forward to making a few more ‘smalls’ over the coming year.