I’ve just finished the third of the Christmas cross-stitch designs from Faby Reilly’s Christie stitch-a-long. These were the first two…

This time the design was a gorgeous Christmas tree. Faby’s designs are using soft muted colours (the star above is in the proper colours) I’m pretty traditional at Christmas with lots of green and red, together with just a little sparkle. I used a variegated green floss and a lighter one for the leaves. I love it, it makes such a difference when all the red and gold beads are stitched on. The rice stitch in ivory and gold is a lovely finishing touch.

To finish it I decided to make it more long and thin, I liked the way the first one had worked out so I used the same fabric for this one. I cut it to include the green stripe so it made an extra border. The gold cord is one I made when I first got my cordmaker. It looks great but so far it’s just been too much sparkle to go around these decorations. I decided a single length across the red would look OK. I embroidered three sequin stars to echo the ones on the design, added a red check back and made a red and green cord to go around it and make a hanger.

I love it and I’ve already decided where it will go, hanging off the key on our old bureau. The final design from Faby is a gorgeous Christmas heart, perfect for a card for my OH.

Last year I made a little cross-stitch decoration for my two children, James had just got a pug called Eddie so I found a pug Christmas cross-stitch…

Well I spotted another one! It’s only tiny, so it didn’t take long to stitch up at all – the actual design is only about 1.5 x 2″. It’s a design by Mouseloft which I bought on ebay. He doesn’t look too impressed with his Santa hat 🙂

Finishing it was pretty quick too. I used my red check fabric to add borders to make it a reasonable size, stitched on a backing and then trimmed round with some mini red pompom fabric. All that was needed then was a length of cord to make a hanging loop.

I’ll take it round as a surprise once I know their tree is up!