Gingerbread Church by Victoria Sampler 7: ….. and it’s finished!

The final part of the Gingerbread Church assembly that I need to do is to fit together the main body of the church. The instructions in the chart booklet by Thea Dueck of Victoria Sampler are very detailed, so it’s easy to do, but quite time consuming if you want it to come out well.

I first laced up the main roof sections. I held the two pieces at the sort of angle that they would be in when the roof was completed, so that I didn’t lace them up too tightly or too loosely.

Then I joined the side walls in the correct order, in the same way that I did with the steeple. Before I laced up the final side to make it into a rectangle, I added the base section (but I forgot to photograph that bit….).

So this is the main part of church completed. I attached the roof next, by lacing from the top point of the joined roof sections down to the lower edge, four times, to make sure that the roof was sitting correctly in place, and not twisted.

With a curved needle, I attached the steeple. This was FIDDLY!!!  It’s important to make sure that the bases of the main body and the steeple are level with each other first, or the finished building will not sit flat. I laced into every second or third back stitch as I went up the steeple sides, joining the steeple to the main building. I left the stitches very loose until I had done all of one side, then I pulled the stitches taut, and fastened off by hiding the thread in the join between the two pieces of the building.

This shows the completed church, seen from underneath. You can see that the base seams are not laced together – I didn’t feel that this was necessary.

The chart booklet’s instructions don’t give any guidance about how to join the steeple to the main building. When I first bought the booklet, I emailed Victoria Sampler to ask how I should join them, and someone from their Customer Services section said that the steeple was meant to just be placed alongside the main part, but I didn’t think that that would work, as the steeple is so tall and thin, that it would probably fall over. Hence my ‘solution’. It’s definitely fiddly to do, but it came out very well. I needed to buy the curved needles specially (from Ebay), but they weren’t expensive. I used small ones – about one and a half inches long from end to end, with a large eye.

So, as a final review of this chart booklet, I’d say that this project is just wonderful to do! I love this addition to my Gingerbread Village. I chose to use Zweigart ‘Cognac’ coloured 28 count evenweave fabric, as the suggested Antique Almond is impossible for me to get hold of, but I’m using this shade for all the buildings, and I’m very pleased with it. I used one and a half skeins of Anchor number 2 off white to do all the cross stitching in total, instead of the Kreinik Mori white suggested in the booklet. I also used most of one ball of DMC Perle 8 (as it’s used for joining the panels together, as well as the embroidery).

I bought the main coloured thread and bead/button pack from Sew and So in the UK (but not the white thread pack, which is available separately if you choose to buy that too). The accessory packs are quite expensive, but very high quality. For some reason, the thread pack I bought had far too much Mauve (about three yards of 12 strands), but I almost ran out of one of the greens, despite stitching very carefully so that I didn’t run out. And with the pearl beads, I ended up with only four pearl beads at the end, as I’d had to throw a few away, as the holes were badly drilled and couldn’t be threaded. I think that’s a bit mean, considering the cost of the accessory packs!!

The instructions in the booklet are very detailed, and the stitch diagrams are very clear. Some sloppy editing (I’m a stickler for proper spelling!) lets it down somewhat, but that’s just me being picky. The paper is good quality, and the charts are printed at a good size so that you can work directly from them.

Overall, I’m so pleased with this project, I am tempted to start the next one in the series (the Christmas Tree) now!

Here are some views of the finished Gingerbread Church:

 

 

 

And just in time for Christmas, I can put the Gingerbread Church under my tree alongside the Stitching House and Candy Cane Cottage. What do you think of it?

 

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