At our December meeting at Skipton Stitchers we have a lovely tradition of a Christmas card swop, this involves everyone (who wants to take part) making a Christmas card, preferably with a bit of stitching on and writes a general Christmas greeting from the group. Having brought a card you can then take one home.

I needed something fairly quick to stitch. I decided to use one of the ideas from my Stitch a Garden course, I embroidered a tree on a scrap of linen. It really didn’t take long, it’s only small.

I just used straight stitch for the branches, stem stitch for the trunk and some satin stitch for the pot. A few red French knots just nicely finished it.

To give you an idea of size, this is an A5 card…as I said, it’s pretty small but I think it’s worked well.

In return I got a very cute cross-stitched card with a mouse on, I’m tempted to make it into a little decoration ready for next Christmas.