I have set myself the rather long-term project of making the Gingerbread Village series of cross stitch buildings, designed by Thea Dueck of Victoria Sampler in Canada! These are lovely little 3D projects to make – some are ‘usable’ items, such as the Gingerbread Stitching House workbox, which I made last year, and some are ‘just’ little models (but still really sweet anyway!). If you are tempted to stitch along with me, and live in the UK, then buy the charts (and project packs, if you like to) from Sew and So, rather than direct from Victoria Sampler, as the shipping is prohibitive from Canada to the UK.
I am making the Candy Cane Cottage at the moment – here is the first ‘end’ of the house. Most of the design is cross stitch, with some hardanger for the windows, and lots of little seed beads as embellishment.
It can seem quite scary when you come to cut the threads to start doing the hardanger, but the instructions in the chart booklet are very clear – you just need to go slowly, and use very sharp scissors.
The outer satin stitches are done first (as in the large left-hand window), to define the area, then the unwanted threads are cut away as in the right-hand window (that’s the scary bit!), then the remaining threads are wrapped the make the ‘bars’ of the windows, as in the top window.
This should be quite a quick project – I want this finished in time to be displayed under my Christmas tree!
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Janet Granger's Blog 
This is looking fantastic!
It looks adorable!
Love Thea’s gingerbread designs, just a reminder that mistakes in hardanger can be repaired so makes it a little less scary.
Yes, I know mistakes can be rectified, but it still seems a scary technique to me, after all that stitching (as you do the cross stitch first, usually, so you’ve invested a lot of time in the project by the time you cut the hardanger threads).