All Our Yesterdays cross stitch collection project: 2

Here’s an update on the little cross stitch pictures featuring cute children from a series called ‘All Our Yesterdays’, designed by Faye Whittaker. I’m planning on doing several of the designs from Faye’s range, so that I can have a collection of them on the wall of my coastal-themed bathroom.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, my bathroom is having to be re-decorated as we found mould in it, and the person who had come to test the house to see if we had any mould (because I’ve got an allergy) had a fit when he saw that the bathroom was wallpapered instead of being painted or tiled. Hence, this stitching is aimed at giving my bathroom something a bit more interesting than just painted walls, which I find boring!

I started with one of the designs from the ‘Collector’s Edition’ booklet – this one is called ‘Watching the Tide’. It’s a picture of a little girl and boy, standing looking out to sea. It’s very simple, but cleverly designed, as the blues used for the sea and sky are sometimes in full cross stitch and sometimes in half cross stitch, so the colours look more faded, as more background fabric shows though the stitches. It’s subtle, but it works!

I was going to do the figures first and then the background, but I found that doing the detail for a long time made me want to do an ‘easier bit’, so I alternated between detail and background instead.

The cross stitch is transformed when the limited amount of backstitch is added – it really brings it to life.

At about half way through, I photographed it to show you how much difference the backstitch makes. It looks nice just with the cross stitch completed:

But once the back stitch is done, in a dark grey single strand, look how different it is:

I just need to stitch the little boy who stands next to her, and do a bit more background….

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