Gingerbread Christmas tree by Victoria Sampler 2: the cross stitch scene on side one

I am currently stitching the Gingerbread Christmas tree by Thea Dueck of Victoria Sampler from her chart pack booklet. I am up to the cross stitch scene on side one of the tree.

The chart pack is available from  here. The tree stands about nine inches high when finished.

This lovely part of the design in the centre is of Santa racing across the sky in his sleigh, pulled by the reindeer. To get the detail in, it’s stitched over one thread, with one strand. That part of the chart booklet is reproduced LARGE, so that it’s easier to see, but even so, this part was quite taxing! I needed good light to stitch it, as I’m using darker fabric than Thea recommends, so the contrast was a bit less than if I’d stitched it on the suggested paler almond fabric.

This is the panel once all the cross stitch and surface embroidery is completed.

There’s beading along the lower vine and flowers band on each side of the tree, and buttons and beads on the top part. As I’m using my stash rather than Thea’s materials pack, to make sure that I shared out the available beads evenly, I divided them up into four groups and stored them into little resealable bags, to be on the safe side!

For each side, I used 12 mixed colour seed beads, 8 buttons, 3 silvery white number 11 beads, 4 gold balls about 3mm, and 5 stripy number 6 size beads.

I only realised after I’d stitched it, but I had used the wrong shade of green for the Lazy Daisy leaves on this bottom band – it should have been a yellower green. Never mind, it still looks pretty! I’ll just have to remember to be consistent on the other three sides. The white backstitched outline, as well as defining the shape, will be used later when I lace each panel to its neighbour, so it is important when doing this bit to start and end the threads very securely on the back, as the backstitching will be pulled on to lace the panels close to each other.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Advertisement