Christmas mini-stitching ideas

If you own a twelfth scale doll’s house, or know someone who does, then here are some ideas for mini-stitching kits that you could either make yourself in the run-up to Christmas, buy to give as kits for loved ones, or drop subtle hints about so that someone else buys them for you! All these miniature needlepoint kits are available now on my website.

Firstly, some Christmas stockings. These are stitched on 40 count silk gauze, and when finished, they’re 1 1/4 inches high. They are £9.95 each, available from here.

Then there’s placemats (£14.95 for a kit to make four), a long table runner (£12.95), and a round table centre (£8.95) – all on 32 count silk gauze.

Then there’s Christmas tree mats (£20.95) on 32 count silk gauze, to stand your tree on.

There are also lots of little kits that make good stocking fillers, that aren’t Christmas-themed, but will make any doll’s house stitcher squeal with delight on Christmas morning!!

Some of the kits featured above are bolster cushions, round footstools, wallhangings, teacosies and firescreens. There are over 280 different kits to choose from – there’s bound to be something suitable to ask Santa for!

 

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Home Sweet Home Workbox 47: special offer and book reprint announcement!!!

A while back, I wrote a long series of blog posts about the Home Sweet Home embroidered workbox etui set, which I made from the wonderful book by Carolyn Pearce. The book had originally been published in 2012, but within a couple of years it went out of print – just as I was starting my blog post series. So, I was very aware at the time that if people became interested enough in the project that they’d like to make their own, they wouldn’t be able to, as the book was unavailable!

However, there is now some good news! The book is being published again, and copies will be in the UK shortly.

This is the version of the house that I made:

This is the inside, showing the inner tray and some of the smalls:

This shows the inside, once the inner tray has been removed:

And here’s all the smalls I made, set out on their own:

The book will be available from Fobbles in Cumbria, for one, and Beverley, who runs the Fobbles shop, has kindly agreed to offer readers of this blog 10% off the usual price that she will be selling the book for (usually £19.99), if they email her to pre-order and mention that they saw the offer here. You’ll then get 10% off the retail price when the book is in stock at Fobbles, towards the end of October. Just email Beverley at sales@fobbles.co.uk  The offer is valid until 31st October 2016.

It’s well worth getting the book – it has fantastically detailed instructions, and beautiful pictures throughout.

 

Carolyn Pearce

Home Sweet Home: an embroidered workbox

ISBN 13:   978-0980876703

Publisher: Country Bumpkin (Australia)

 

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Gingerbread Church by Victoria Sampler 2: the roof, and stitching on black fabric

I’m stitching all the roof pieces for the Gingerbread Church design by Thea Dueck of Victoria Sampler  this week. I’m not that keen to stitch on black fabric usually, as I find it makes me tense up, and gives me headaches. So I reckoned I would get them all out of the way now.

So, if you want to have the black roof on this project (like I do), you’ll have to put up with the issues, and make it as painless as possible! The main problem is making the holes in the black fabric show up as clearly as possible.

When I started on the first roof panel, I was stitching in my conservatory, in bright sunlight. You can see from this photo above that there was just too much light around! It was quite difficult to count the fabric threads accurately.

So I turned the tapestry stand so that the fabric was as much in the shade as I could manage, and I also put a piece of white fabric on my lap, so that the holes of the black fabric showed up clearer and more consistently.

The roof panels don’t have all that much stitching on them, but they do have quite a few beads. Here’s the first piece finished:

I found that I needed guidelines in white thread placed first, to make it obvious where I would be attaching the small pearl beads, because if I’d just stitched on the snowflake ones first, the snowflakes themselves would be obscuring the fabric too much, and make it impossible to count accurately from their placement point to the three points above them.

So I stitched this temporary line horizontally, on the line where the snowflakes would eventually go.

From there. I could count up much more easily, and attach the lines of three pearl beads each time, and the individual ones in between the snowflakes.

Lastly, I attached the snowflakes, unpicking the guideline thread as I went. Here’s both roof pieces finished.

Then I stitched the steeple roof in the same way.

The steeple has four small triangles for the roof pieces. I tacked one guideline stitch where the snowflake would go, rather than a line.

These small roof pieces were very quick to do – only taking 45 minutes each!

That’s all the black fabric pieces finished – all the rest are to be stitched on the Zweigart 28 count evenweave ‘Cognac’ shade fabric.

 

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