Gingerbread Christmas tree by Victoria Sampler 5: the finished Gingerbread tree

It’s finished! The little Gingerbread Christmas tree by Thea Dueck of Victoria Sampler has come out really well, and can now join the other Gingerbread buildings in my village. If you’d like to stitch this too, the chart pack is available from  here.

I’m so pleased with this – it’s a great addition to my slowly-growing Gingerbread Village from Victoria Sampler. This is how my little Gingerbread Village looks now.

Thanks for reading my blog during the past year! I hope you’ve enjoyed what I have written about. Have a great Christmas  🙂

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gingerbread Christmas tree by Victoria Sampler 4: how to assemble the tree

I am making the Gingerbread Christmas tree by Thea Dueck of Victoria Sampler at the moment from her chart pack booklet. The chart pack is available from  here. I’ve now completed all the cross stitch, and added all the beads, so now it’s time to assemble the tree.

Here’s my four completed panels:

I backstitched a base piece (this is optional if you’re not going to make this design as an etui, but I felt it would feel more substantial with a closed off base).

Then I made paper templates of the shapes, that fit just inside the backstitched lines.

From those, I made a mount board template for each piece of stitching (i.e. one base, and four tree sides). The square base has pieces of double sided tape on it already, to stick the felt padding onto.

For padding, I stuck a piece of oversized felt on each template piece with the double sided tape, then trimmed it down later with scissors:

The stitched pieces were trimmed to have seam allowances on each side of half an inch:

Then I laced the stitching over the mount board templates. The points of the tree sides are fiddly to do – the point has to be as neat as possible, so that these will all meet up together and not be bulky. I had to trim the fabric back quite hard, and keep making tacking stitches to hold it all down. I laced from side to side first.

The pointy bit at the top is stitched down last:

Make sure, as you’re stitching down the top, that the mount board template doesn’t get ‘pinched’ and push its way down – the board should stay within the backstitched outline.

The final lacing goes from top to bottom, after doing the sides, to hold it all together:

Then the corners are mitred:

Each panel then looks like this, with the backstitching just showing at the edges. Then each panel is laced to the adjoining one with Perle 12 white thread, and the base fitted into place last, using the same method:

Ta-da!!! Here’s my little gingerbread tree, all ready for Christmas!

And here’s the base of it, to show how the lacing of the panels is done:

Isn’t it pretty?! I want to get all my decorations out now, to display it with the other Gingerbread buildings that I’ve made.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gingerbread Christmas tree by Victoria Sampler 3: stitching sides two, three and four.

I am currently stitching the Gingerbread Christmas tree by Thea Dueck of Victoria Sampler from her chart pack booklet. I’ve completed side one, and now I have been stitching the other sides of this lovely cross stitch design. The chart pack is available from  here. It stands about nine inches high when finished.

The original chart pack instructions show you how to finish it as an opening etui, but I’ve decided that I want it finished NOW! So, I’m going to stitch up all four sides so that it is a closed shape instead, as I’ve seen it done like that on Pinterest, and it looks good. I’ve just got no patience….!

I’m finding it a lot easier to stitch all the white cross stitch for these panels first (whereas, on the first panel, I stitched the green, and then the white), as the white shows up better, so I can stitch it faster. Then I fill in with the two green shades.

The snowman panel has a lot of snow in white on it, obviously! So it was easier to place all the white on that part too, and then stitch the coloured buildings and details. That bargello wave still does my head in with the counting though!

I realised, halfway through doing this side, that I won’t have enough of the main green colour to do all four sides (as I’m using threads from my stash rather than the materials pack that can be bought), so I matched as closely as I could from my stash (Anchor 267). The lesson from this is to buy Thea’s materials packs! They seem expensive at first, but they’ve got lots of special threads in, and all the beads, and if you had to start from scratch it would cost a lot more.  I should take my own advice, really….

Here’s the first and second panels:

The floral vine along the base of each side is a nice change of pace, after doing all that cross stitching. The panel up to this part is almost all cross stitch, with a little back stitch and some queen stitch for the tree on the left.

As I’d used the wrong green for this part on the first panel, I had to remember to keep on doing it ‘wrong’ for these other panels too!

I repeated the red flowers the same as for the first side…which is wrong too! They should be a different stitch. I must be going doolally, and not reading the chart correctly  🙂 Still, they look nice – you make a base of five spokes, coming out from one central point, and then start at the centre with another thread, and work a kind of stem stitch out along the spokes until they are full.

The next panel was easy to do, as I’m getting in the swing of it now:

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

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