X Stitchin

Productive week here at home!  Not only have I been spring cleaning/organizing, but I have also checked an item off of my WIP list (huge granny square blanket for the couch, started, oh I dunno, a year ago???) and completed a swap over on Craftster!

This was for the Hoopla swap (check out the gallery!).  The theme was Negative Space or Silhouette, which was a great opportunity to make one of the patterns from A Rainbow of Stitches that I've just been itching to do.   It pales in comparison to some of the amazingly creative hoops made for this swap, but I'm very happy with it and it was really fun to try!

I have a nice running list of more projects from that book, which has both embroidery and cross stitch designs in it, so I'm all set to stitch up a storm.

I've also discovered that I LOVE cross stitch magazines from the UK.  A little steep in price for a magazine at $9.99 a piece, but when I looked into getting a subscription it was going to be around 150 USD yikes!  I'll stitck to buying them when I can find them at Jo-Ann!  They are packed full of charts though, so worth the price if you plan on doing a lot of stitching!

This little one was from Cross Stitch Crazy magazine, Issue 155, which was packed full of really cute small, Asian themed charts.  I'm definitely making more of these, there are 5 different Geisha and tons of cherry blossoms and koi fish designs.

Two more needlework swaps in the work so I'll get to stitchin!  Hope y'all have a fabulous weekend!

Rediscovering Cross Stitch

Way back in the middle school days, I took an afterschool class in cross stitch.  I remember enjoying it, but quickly dropping it since it wasn't exactly the cool thing for a 13 year old girl to be doing in her spare time!  Years passed and I decided to give a stamped cross stitch blanket kit when I was pregnant....never finished it.  See a pattern here?!  I always liked it, but seemed to lack the motivation to take it further.

In my never ending quest to be buried alive by books, I picked up the hilarious book Makoto's Cross-Stitch Super Collection.  It is so funny and full of small charts that are funny and simple enough for a beginner x-stitcher such as myself, as well as some modern project ideas.  Anyway, I've done a couple of the charts for little things like bookmarks and then while flipping through it one day, was inspired!

I had been in a bit of a slump and had to make a book for the One Tiny Book swap over on Craftster, and this seemed a perfect time to attempt to combine fabric and paper!

The base of the book is a 3" by 3" children's board book that i covered in scrapbook paper.  Edges are painted due to my lack of skills with the Exacto knife, but the color was a perfect match straight out of the bottle!

My partner was the lovely hgddm and she had a wonderful Pinboard full of nautical stuff.  Each page is wrapped in jute twine that I picked up at the good ole Dollar Tree.

Isn't the crab great?!  Too funny!

My favorite:  the shark!!!

...and the front and back cover, octopus is yet another Dollar Tree Treasure!

This project was VERY time consuming due to all the stitching and waiting for glue and paint to dry, but absolutely worth it!  I will definitely do it again with another theme in the near future :)