As I’m turning a new leaf, I thought I’d start afresh blog-wise too, so I’m moving to a different blog. This one will remain here with all the old posts for posterity, but all new posts will be made over at my new place – Diary of a Domestic Goddess. Please do come visit me there and leave a message or too, if just to make it feel a bit more homey!

Click on the ruby slippers to be whisked away to my new blog
All together now – “There’s no place like home!”

STITCH CREATIONS

Just a quickie this week to send you all in the direction of a foreign blog that hosts beautiful stitch-alongs, such as the 15-sided biscornu I have stitched for my Step-Mum’s Christmas gift.

There are LOADS of gorgeous little designs available for free from Stitch Creations and some of the posts are double-texted so that there’s an English version too. However, you can always use a translator site such as Babel Fish to translate it all if you want to.

My version of the 15-sided biscornu stitch-along from Stitch Creations

I didn’t get as far as I’d like to have done this UFO week, mostly due to the fact that I frogged all the work I had done on the pattern I had originally chosen as I got heartily fed up of it (the chart wasn’t symmetrical and had loads of errors in it and I had several frogging sessions on it even prior to pulling it all out!), and then chose a different design and go ahead with that.

I’m very pleased with how its looking so far though and as the design is so completely different from the one I’ve completed for the other side (Blackwork Cherry Blossoms), my Grom can display whichever side she fancies depending on her mood!

This is where I’m up to. As it’s intended as a Christmas gift, I’ll be continuing with this design and then assembling the cushion.

Seeing as how I’m now using a different design for the reverse of my Grom’s cushion, I thought that this week I’d send everyone over to the place where I got the new design for it.

Les Grilles de Liselotte is chock full of gorgeous designs, all available absolutely free. With such myriad charts, you might find yourself hard pushed to drag yourself away from the pages and I guarantee you’ll be downloading more than one for use!

In the run up to Christmas, I am delighted to find the very pretty Etiquette Noel, which I am definitely going to be using as four separate Christmas cards this year!

Posted in Freebie Fridays Tagged: Christmas cards, Cross Stitch, free charts, Freebie Fridays, freebies ]]> http://kellinstitches.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/freebie-friday-9/feed/ 0 Kell1976 Freebie Friday banliselotte2JPG Noel http://kellinstitches.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/ufo-update/ http://kellinstitches.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/ufo-update/#comments Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:29:30 +0000 Lady Kell of Kincavel http://kellinstitches.wordpress.com/?p=384 Continue reading →]]>

I’ve decided that I can’t bear the thought of making the cushion with a plain back after originally planning on making it reversible, so I’ve decided on an alternative design. The chart I’ve chosen is a freebie from Les Grilles de Liselotte and is called ABC Bleu, but I’ll be working it in cream and green-gold. Hopefully I’ll be able to get the majority of the design completed in what remains of UFO week, although I first have to finish unpicking the disastrous butterflies!

It’s official – I am no longer doing that flippin’ butterfly design for the reverse of the cushion for my Grom – it will have a plain back instead. I’ve stitched half the 2nd butterfly tonight only to now realise it’s all one stitch too far down. This is the second time I’ve had to unpick this butterfly and the first one was plagued by the frog too. Also the design itself isn’t mirrored properly and is full of mistakes, so I’m giving it up as a bad job. I shall unpick the whole damned thing and use the fabric for something else instead, and use a plain cream backing for the cushion. I shall finish that off (the front of the cushion is the Blackwork Cherry Blossoms) and then move onto my Mam’s Laura Ashley Home Sweet Home sampler instead.

Am really p*ssed off now. Have wasted the entire evening on those bloody butterflies – yet again!

It’s UFO week again – time to pick up an unfinished object and put in some serious stitching time! At the moment, almost all my stitching time is in the evenings after baby is in bed, and I happily sit for a couple of hours till my fingers go stiff. This week I’ll be working on the second side of the cushion I’m stitching for my Grom’s Christmas gift. I laid it aside a little while ago as I had to frog so much of it that it was driving me nuts, however, time is cracking on and I really need to get this finished.

This is where I was up to when I left off:

It’s Saturday and I’ve started a new project this week, so here’s how it’s going so far.

Seeing as how my little’un is getting way more mobile, I thought it best to make a start on making door swags (padded attachments to hang from the door handles on either side so the doors can’t get shut on tiny fingers). I got the idea from one of the cross stitch magazines I had a few months ago, but I wasn’t keen on the floral design on the one in the mag, so I decided to have ago at putting together something of my own. This one is using motifs from various places, but I’m planning on designing at least one from scratch.

For the living room door swag, I’m using motifs and lettering from various sources. I’ve never made anything like these before, so I’ll be interested myself to see how they turn out!

I’ve sketched out and charted a design for the living room one incorporating a McIntosh Rose style motif which will be stitched in greens and peachy shades to complement the natural tones in the livingroom.

As you can see, I’ve now completed the cross and back stitching on the lettering, the two leaves and the rose on either side of the lettering (with the leaves around them). I now just have the main rose at bottom centre and the smaller roses diagonally upwards and outwards from there to stitch and the design will be complete! After that it’s figuring out how to assemble the things!

As I’m growing more and more interested in designing my own charts, I thought I’d try and inspire others to do likewise with this weeks Freebie Friday, so I’m sending you all in the direction of a free Celtic Cross Stitch Alphabet generator. All you have to do is type in the letter, word or phrase you’d like to convert into cross stitch et voila – Robert is your mother’s brother – you have a dandy little chart appear on your screen. You can then print it off or, if you don’t have a printer, copy it onto graph paper for use. How simple and handy is that?

Project: Christmas Cards
Designs: Both by Kell Smurthwaite ©
Materials: Fabric from a Polstitches Grab Bag (I think it’s English Rose 28-count linen); Venus 2706 floss; aperture cards (cream oval and pale pink marble square)

I decided to have a go at charting my own designs and sketched these up pretty quickly as they’re relatively simple designs, but I think they turned out quite nicely. Both are stitched using the same floss and fabric and neither took very long to do. Having completed these two from design to finish, I think I’m now motivated to try designing more to see what I can come up with.