"We were on a break!"

So I took a bit of an extended break from the blog for a while there. Mainly as I didn't know what I really wanted to do with it or where I wanted to go with it.

Spring is sprunging (I know it's not a real word!) round here, despite the snow falls which I'm just ignoring so I've decided to clean out the metaphorical press and start afresh.

So in the spirit of that, my lovely blog is going to relaunch shortly. I'll still be mainly focusing on craft as it's what I love but there will be a bit of beauty, fashion & books thrown in for good measure.

xxx

Funky Town

I’m going to put it out there – I am sick of looking for cross-stitch patterns and only finding ones that are of horses or kittens. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against either species but I don’t necessarily want to be cross-stitching them in variants of brown of an evening. Which is why I was thrilled when, during one of my Pinterest-fests before Christmas, I stumbled upon Satsuma Street designs.

The patterns are all available on Etsy and are really reasonable prices considering the quality and clarity of the instructions. My favourites were definitely the colourful take on different cities or countries of the world. They are available for instant download and even the deals where you email the ones you want were received very quickly. I went a bit mad and bought quite a few which left me with the massive dilemma of which to try first!

In the end, I thought Paris was cheerful and went about gathering up my threads and material and curling up in front of the fire to begin. Even putting the threads onto the ring holder I use for them made me smile – not a dull colour in sight!

Although I did make a mistake from the outset and used too small a hoop, which has meant that I’ve had to reposition my material a few times. It will definitely need ironing before doing anything with the finished product.

The pattern is very straightforward to read as both colours and symbols are used. There’s also a handy small version of the pattern on one page, with an enlarged version on the following pages. I found I only used the bigger one if I had trouble making out a symbol at first but stuck with the smaller one for the most part. There are also handy instructions in terms of the size and the frame size used in the finished product picture (which I should have paid more attention to at the start).

I started Paris just before Christmas and just finished it now. To be honest, I probably could have done it quicker but didn’t have as much time over the Christmas break and after than I thought I would. I’d say in terms of difficulty, I’d put this at a medium because of the size and time it takes but it is definitely one of the most enjoyable patterns I’ve used. My new dilemma is which one of the patterns I bought to do next…….

Name and Birthday Cross-Stitch

So my first proper post is a cross-stitching one. This has been the craft I’ve been into the longest…..ever since a teacher realised I was getting my sister to do my knitting homework so gave me one to do instead!

This was done a present for my other half’s nephew’s first birthday. I thought a home-made gift would be nice. It’s surprisingly easy to do as well. And, while I love big projects, sometimes a nice quick and straightforward one is just what you need!

I started off by buying the frame I knew I wanted to use. This one came from Ikea and was in a pack of two for €4.50. I liked the bright bold colour of it and the size was perfect. I then measured the size of the window of the frame and worked out the count of fabric I needed. I stitched this on 16 count Aida fabric in a cream colour (I got this from eBay years ago). The count worked out at 180x80 and so I was able to measure this out on graph paper. This made it easy to find the right layout and pictures for my design that would fit perfectly in the frame.

The letters and numbers used were from a free pattern I got a few years ago. The balloons came from download from the DMC website. There’s a great source of free patterns out there if you’re just starting or even looking for something simple which are great to make use of. The joy of doing something like this is that you can suit it to the person in question. This one had balloons on it, another I did had trains and cars, another a teddy bear. It really is all up to how much space the name itself takes up and what you can fit around that! I was lucky with the name Ryan for my first go but a longer name would lead to less space. While normally I’d stitch in DMC (as all my books are in that and it’s a bit easier to get for me), this was done in Anchor thread that I had handy in the colours I wanted. I think children’s’ projects always look better stitched in bright colours so that’s what I aimed for. The joy of a design like this is that, once you have it drawn out, you don’t have to follow a chart for colours as you can just decide them yourself.

The frame I put this in had a cardboard piece in, which most do. I used this to attach the fabric to so that it was guaranteed to stay central to the frame. I just used some double sided sticky-tape around the back and trimmed any excess fabric. And voila! All told this took about an hour to plan out (once I had measured the frame & had the fabric count) and maybe another 2 hours of stitching time. It seems to go down well considering that, after showing a few friends it (who always want to know what I’m working on), they wanted ones for their little people! Slowly working my way through that list of names and dates but thanks to Ryan for starting it all off!

Hello & Welcome!!

Hello!

I’m Susan and I love to craft! I mainly am into cards/papercraft and cross stitch but might start to branch out if time and funding permits.

So this blog is going to be a mix of all the different types of crafts that I do. I hope to update it as often as possible. Some other things may creep in as well but hey ho that’s just me!

Hopefully you like the blog and let me know any ideas or suggestions or any comments at all on it

Toodles for now!