A quick cross stitch project: 3. The Spirit of Holiday Baking (a gingerbread style angel by Brookes Books)

I was determined to get this Spirit of Holiday Baking 3D figure from Brookes Books finished in time to display for Christmas (THIS Christmas, I mean!), and I’ve just about managed it.

This is the second half sheet of perforated paper with  the ‘accessories’ and wings for the angel cross stitched, back stitched, and all the beads sewn on.

Then comes the scary bit! You have to cut each piece out, one row of holes away from the stitching, all the way round. This is where you realise that it’s very important, if there is a part of the design where there is a ‘sharp angle’, that you didn’t take the thread across the back across the unstitched gap – because then, when you get to this stage, you’d be cutting through that long thread, and making your design unravel!

These are all the pieces, ready to assemble with glue dots and a few judicious stitches in a matching thread to hold everything together. This reminds me of those paper dolls that I had when I was little, with the little tabs on the edges so that you could ‘hang’ different items on the main doll to make different outfits.

Assembled!! Didn’t take long, as glue dots don’t need time to dry, unlike tacky glue, which can get a bit messy. From this angle, you can see that the beads really add interest. The layering of the pieces is a simple idea, but really clever, and adds to the cuteness of this project.

Finished (just)! I need to add a mount board bracket at the back so that she can stand up unaided, but she’s near enough finished  🙂

Isn’t she lovely? I’ll definitely be making more from this series, as I have a bundle of over a dozen chart packs for these ‘angels’. I find they are really good projects to take when I’m travelling, as they don’t need to be done in a hoop (in fact, they can’t be, as they are on paper), the holes in the 14 count paper are quite large, so I don’t need a magnifier, and there aren’t too many colours, so it’s easy to pick it up and put it down without getting confused about where I am in the design. Well worth having a go. Visit Brooke’s Etsy shop  if you’d like to buy any of her lovely chart packs.

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A quick cross stitch project: 2. The Spirit of Holiday Baking (a gingerbread style angel by Brookes Books)

I’m trying to get this quick cross stitch project called ‘The Spirit of Holiday Baking’ by Brookes Books stitched in time for Christmas, as I want to display it along with the gingerbread village buildings from Victoria Sampler that I’ve made before (not that they’re in the same kind of scale, but I just like gingerbread things!).

The design itself is quite simple, but deceptively so – the shading is good, considering there aren’t a huge number of thread colours in the design. But the area to be stitched (in a couple of weeks. Yikes!) just for the main ‘angel’ is about three inches by eight, on 14 count perforated paper, and I’m really busy with posting out Christmas orders of my embroidery kits at this time of year, so I haven’t got much ‘free time’ for stitching.

But whenever I get a minute, I put a few stitches in, and it’s growing….

There are two main sheets of designs. One is the angel herself, with a few ‘accessories’ on the spare paper around her (which will be cut out later and assembled into one piece). I’ve finished that bit now – adding the beads really makes it look special. The bare patch on the front of her apron is for a pocket to be appliqued later. She has a cute beaded flower on her hat.

Now I’m doing the second sheet, which is for little gingerbread pieces, and the angels wings. Aren’t these looking great?

I’ve just got the wings to complete, then I can start to put it all together, so it should actually be finished in time for Christmas.

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A quick cross stitch project: 1. The Spirit of Holiday Baking (a gingerbread style angel by Brookes Books)

Now that I’ve completed the Strawberry Fayre etui (which has taken me almost all of this year to complete – I started it at the end of January 2018!!), I am feeling the need to do some ‘easy ‘stitching’ for a while. So, a quick cross stitch project like this  ‘Spirit of Holiday Baking’ fits the bill perfectly, as it’s festive, and doesn’t take long to make, so it should be finished in time for Christmas.

This is a cross stitch 3D ‘angel’ type design, by Brooke Nolan of Brooke’s Books. Brooke sells an amazing range of charts for all kinds of things – many 3D, which I love to stitch. I got a set of 14 chart packs of her gorgeous figures for Christmas last year (the Christmas pixie sent good ‘prompting’ emails to my husband, in plenty of time  🙂  )

This is the haul that I got:

I’ve decided to make the one in the centre first. It has the ‘gingerbread’ theme that I like to do at Christmas. For the past few years I have been making Thea Dueck’s little buildings from her Gingerbread Village range, but this year I fancied a change.

The design is to be stitched on 14 count perforated paper – this is more like thin cardboard, and is actually quite robust. It comes in lots of colours, although for this design I only need the brown one, which is a warm gingerbready colour, fortunately!

The chart pack lists DMC thread suggestions, but I converted these to Anchor colours, as I already have a full set of Anchor threads in my stash which I use in the dollhouse needlepoint kits that I produce. I used a size 24 tapestry needle for the stitching.

Here’s my materials, ready to start (the chart itself  I have coloured in with coloured pencils, as my brain can read that better than when it’s just in black and white symbols).

I taped masking tape around the edge of the perforated paper to stop the thread from catching on the rough edges. I don’t need any kind of frame for this, so I’ll just hold it in my hand to stitch.

The instructions said to use three strands of stranded cotton when stitching. I tried a tiny sample area, and immediately decided that two strands would be OK- I really don’t like stitching with an odd number of strands for embroidery, as it means I can’t double the thread through the needle and knot it, which I prefer.

The completed figure will be about 7.5 inches high, so it’s important to start at one end of the chart, not the centre, so that the design will fit on the paper properly – this is stitched on a half sheet of the perforated paper, which is only just a bit over 8.5 inches top to bottom. When allowing a bit for the masking tape border, that doesn’t leave much leeway!

When it’s completed, I’ll have the scary task of cutting it out right up to the stitching (cutting along the next row of holes from the stitches), but for now, it’s just easy cross stitch, which makes a drastic change from the previous  project!

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