Stitching fun

All the Christmas decorations were taken down and put away in record time last night. I was really keen to get stuck in to some embroidery. I had a browse on various blogs and Etsy but didn't see anything that grabbed me as a design but I decided to go and get the supplies together anyway, just in case something came to me. On the way down the stairs I spotted my vintage and very bedraggled Lucie Attwell Annual and found some wonderful inspiration in there.

I freehand drew the images I wanted onto the linen using a water soluble pen and then used split stitch to do the outlines. There is a great tutorial on how to do split stitch (and other stitches) here on the Sublime Stitching blog.

It was unbelievably easy and the whole thing took me three hours to do including drawing the design and finding all my colours. It would have taken me about half that time with a needle threader so I will have to invest in one. I was really pleased with the finished result. The colours don't look so great on the computer but they look lovely in reality!

And while we are on the subject of embroidery, I'd really like to send a huge thank you to Heleen at Ruby in the Dust who sent me these wonderful goodies after I won her giveaway over the Christmas break.

I adore the hand embroidered buttons and am planning to use them on a baby cardigan I'm knitting for a friend in America. The stickers are rather lovely too and may well travel to America with the cardigan for the big sister to be. The mirror isn't going anywhere. I love it and it's going straight in my handbag!