I’ve been stitching the long sides of the Gingerbread Church building this week. This is the charted design from Thea Dueck of Victoria Sampler in Canada – I am gradually working my way through all the buildings in this series.
I cross stitched all the white first, then filled in with the bright colours for the stained glass windows, and lastly the grass and bushes at the bottom.
The semi-circular blue areas over the windows are eyelets (well, half an eyelet!).
Finally, little pearl beads are attached over each window.
The window motifs for each side are different, so this doesn’t get boring to stitch. I loved doing this part, as the bright colours are lovely to look at, and the threads are silk, so they are very soft and easy to work with.
When I’m working from one of the Victoria Sampler charts, I scan them in from the booklet and print them out at the original size. This is so that I can colour in the chart with coloured pencils – the paper in the booklets is too shiny to colour straight into the booklet, but also because I like to have each chart as a separate piece of paper, as it’s easier to attach to the clip on my tapestry stand.
This is the coloured in chart for one of the long sides of the church. As I finish each section, it’s very satisfying to screw up the relevant chart and bin it – it makes me feel like I’m getting somewhere!
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