It was my daughter’s birthday yesterday, I looked for a birthday card last weekend but couldn’t see one I liked, so I thought I’d do a quick cross-stitch one. I looked on Etsy and found a gin cross-stitch design which looked pretty straight forward and fairly apt too – she’s had a tough few months as a newly qualified nurse on a covid ward…

Things were delayed to start with as despite an extensive DMC collection I typically only had one of the colours, OK so I could have just used what I had, but I felt the subtle colours made it. After a visit to Hobbycraft I could get started.

My next delay was trying to decide on fabric. I started a few stitches on a 32 count evenweave before realising I’d got the sizes mixed up in my head and it was going to work out too big. I tried a couple of different fabrics before rashly deciding to stitch it over one thread!!

She then announced she was coming home a few days earlier, which was lovely but meant I had less time to stitch it! In the end I just carried on stitching in front of her as she didn’t know it was for her!

I finally finished it yesterday evening, the lettering was meant to be cross-stitch but I’d had enough of the tiny cross-stitches by then and just used back-stitch. If ever I have the bright idea of stitching over one thread again, feel free to slap me!!!

The colours haven’t come out quite as crisp as I thought they would – if I stitched it again I would probably use one shade darker for the overlapping ice-cubes and a darker shade for the writing. I do like the slice of lemon though!

I decided to mount it in a hoop as by this time I had found a birthday card! I had a 4″ hoop I bought ages ago at a show, it was painted in marbled greens, it worked perfectly. I trimmed round the edge, glued the edges to the inner ring and covered it with some lace to neaten it up. I decided to leave the back open as I actually quite like it with light coming through.

I gave her it straight away, with the glue still tacky!! I was pleased with the end result and she likes it too.