Autumn Quakers 8: how to mount cross stitch on a quilt hanger

I’m just about to complete this gorgeous cross stitch sampler called ‘Autumn Quakers’ by Rosewood Manor, which I stitched from a chart booklet. As I explained in my previous post, I had planned to frame it, but that didn’t work out, so instead I decided to hang it like a little quilt, from a cute metal hanger.

I first measured the width of the hanger’s dowel, allowing half an inch in from each end for where the hooks for the wooden dowel would be, and trimmed the spare fabric each side basing it on the fact that the finished width will be 15.5 inches and the total finished length will be 22.5 inches, so I cut the sampler fabric two inches bigger all round than these measurements (with more spare fabric at the top than the bottom, to allow for making a casing for the pole).

This is the untrimmed fabric, with the spare fabric temporarily folded under, so that I could see how wide to make it:

Then I cut a piece of heavy iron-on Vilene 15.5 x 22.5 inches, and ironed it onto the reverse of the cotton lining fabric that I’m using (it’s actually cut from an old sheet!). I decided not to iron the Vilene onto the reverse of the actual stitching, as I felt that it would be too bumpy a surface to stick properly. Then I trimmed the cotton fabric away from the edges, so that the Vilene and the cotton fabric were exactly the same size.

Then I placed the trimmed sampler and the cotton/Vilene piece, wrong sides together, and folded the extra linen border of the sampler over the edges of the cotton/Vilene piece, folding it under again to make a hem on three sides, leaving the top edge free for now. This took ages, as I kept pinning the sampler unevenly onto the backing fabric, but eventually I managed it!

This is the sampler with the three sides pinned and ready to hem with slip stitch.

The top edge was hemmed with a generous hem, as the wooden pole has quite a large wooden bead on each end of the pole, so I had to allow enough space to be able to feed the whole thing through the casing once I’d slip stitched the hem.

Once all four sides had been hemmed, I ironed it again, over a towel, from the reverse (quite cool, so that the glue of the Vilene didn’t melt and cause the cotton/Vilene piece to separate).

This is Autumn Quakers now that it is completely finished – I’m really pleased with it, now that I’ve solved the problem of how to finish it!

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Are you interested in doll’s houses and stitching? Then why not visit my website, where you can buy doll’s house needlepoint kits to make all kinds of soft furnishings for one-twelfth scale dollhouses. There are over 280 kits to choose from, plus chart packs, fabric project packs, tutorials, and lots of eye candy to inspire you! Kits are available on 18 and 22 count canvas, 28 and 32 count evenweave, and 32 and 40 count silk gauze, so there’s something for everyone – from beginners to experts.

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Autumn Quakers 7: the stitching is finished!!

I’m trying to ‘clear the decks’ a bit at the moment, as I’ve got several stitching projects on the go that are almost finished. I feel that I want to get stuff finished so that when I start the Carolyn Pearce Strawberry Fayre heart etui after Christmas for the stitchalong, I’ll be able to focus just on that project for a while, without the others ‘calling’ to me!

This country-style sampler by Rosewood Manor is one of those – it’s called Autumn Quakers, and I’ve been doing it occasionally for nearly two years. It’s one of those projects that is very good for when I’m travelling, as I have been stitching it ‘in the hand’, without a frame of any kind, which makes it very portable. Also, it doesn’t use many colours – but it’s beautiful, just the same  🙂

This is where I’d got up to the last time I blogged about my progress:

A couple of weeks ago, I finished it!

Isn’t it lovely?

So, last week I went shopping for a frame for it. I bought what I thought was a bargain, in Wilkinsons – £8.99 for a 16 x 20 inch walnut wood effect frame. It looks really realistic.

Unfortunately, there’s a problem with me using it for framing this sampler. The hardboard backing, even with the glass removed from the frame, takes up so much of the space in the rebate that I don’t think I’ll be able to get the stitching, once it’s mounted, in the rebate space – it’s almost flush with the back surface of the frame surround already.

So, I did a bit of Googling, and decided to get a small quilt hanger to display the sampler on instead. I sent off to The Homespun Loft , and got this lovely parcel by return – a very cute way to gift wrap a stitching goodie!

This is the quilt hanger – it’s made to look like a kind of weathered metal, with a wooden dowel to fix the quilt to (or, in my case, a sampler!).

The Homepsun Loft must have sold me the last one they had, as it isn’t shown on their website any more, but they are also available from The Cotton Patch in Birmingham for £18.95.

Now I just need to line the sampler, and attach it to the hanger.

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Are you interested in doll’s houses and stitching? Then why not visit my website, where you can buy doll’s house needlepoint kits to make all kinds of soft furnishings for one-twelfth scale dollhouses. There are over 280 kits to choose from, plus chart packs, fabric project packs, tutorials, and lots of eye candy to inspire you! Kits are available on 18 and 22 count canvas, 28 and 32 count evenweave, and 32 and 40 count silk gauze, so there’s something for everyone – from beginners to experts.

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Autumn quakers 6: almost finished!

I’ve been stitching like mad on  the Autumn quakers sampler by Rosewood Manor , and now it’s almost finished – here’s my progress over the past couple of weeks.

I’ve now finished another page and a half (sort of). Here’s the sampler with two thirds of it done – six pages of the chart in total:

Isn’t it looking lovely? It’s quite big, too – about 18 inches high, and I’ve still got another row of chart pages to stitch.

The bottom right hand corner of the sampler has a kind of cartouche, which you add your initial to, choosing from the complete alphabet of letter motifs which are included in the chart booklet. I haven’t stitched that part yet, as I’m not sure if I’m going to do it exactly as the chart says to, or ‘do my own thing’.

But it’s good to see how high the sampler will be in total, now that I’ve stitched the height of that page, even if I haven’t done the whole width yet.

For most of this sampler, I’ve been cutting the thread straight off the little balls of Valdani three-strand thread. I’ve been using one needle per colour, to try to save a bit of time by not having to re-thread one needle all the time. I bought this thread pack specifically for making this design, and it is very cute, in its own little box, but I decided I wanted something even quicker!

So I unwound all the balls, cut the thread into two foot lengths, and looped it onto a wooden thread sorter, which works much better for me.

Should have thought of that before, really, as you can see from this picture that I haven’t got much more to do, now.

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Are you interested in doll’s houses and stitching? Then why not visit my website, where you can buy doll’s house needlepoint kits to make all kinds of soft furnishings for one-twelfth scale dollhouses. There are over 280 kits to choose from, plus chart packs, fabric project packs, tutorials, and lots of eye candy to inspire you! Kits are available on 18 and 22 count canvas, 28 and 32 count evenweave, and 32 and 40 count silk gauze, so there’s something for everyone – from beginners to experts.

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Autumn quakers 5: getting hooked on this….

Now that I am making significant progress on the Autumn Quakers sampler from Rosewood Manor, I am finding that I am getting hooked on this, as it’s completely habit-forming, and I keep picking it up to do ‘just one more motif’! In just over a week, I have completed another page of the nine page chart booklet (the centre right portion of this image)

You can still see a bit of a ‘bump’ in the diamond area that I talked about last time I showed you this project, but I’m going to have to put up with that, I think. This page of the chart, though, didn’t have anything tricky to manage, except that I mis-counted at one point, and as I couldn’t be bothered to unpick it once I realised, I then had to juggle the surrounding motifs to ‘get back on track’ (and no, I’m not going to tell you where I did that!).

I’m still hooked on stitching this, and I want to get it finished now, as it’s over two thirds finished, and there are other projects calling me….

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Are you interested in doll’s houses and stitching? Then why not visit my website, where you can buy doll’s house needlepoint kits to make all kinds of soft furnishings for one-twelfth scale dollhouses. There are over 280 kits to choose from, plus chart packs, fabric project packs, tutorials, and lots of eye candy to inspire you! Kits are available on 18 and 22 count canvas, 28 and 32 count evenweave, and 32 and 40 count silk gauze, so there’s something for everyone – from beginners to experts.

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