February Finishes

I am quite surprised at the number of finishes I have for February.  Six!  Six ornaments stitched to be gifted or to grace my own tree next Christmas which, if you can see my countdown counter, is only 299 days away!!!  Happy dance, happy dance!!!

You saw a bit of this first finish in my post about my January finishes.  I had hit a bit of a snag with the floss color suggested for the planting pot ... WDW Peach.  Although it looked lovely on the model photo, the skein I had was very stripey with about 6" of dark peach suddenly turning into 6" of light pink. It looked terrible.  I asked for suggestions & played around on my own & came up with using DMC 3773.  I am quite happy with the result   : )

Designer:  With Thy Needle & Thread

Design:  Snow Bird

Fabric:  As suggested by designer

Floss:  As suggested by designer with the

exception noted above

I next tackled an ornament which appeared in the 1999 issue of Just Cross Stitch Christmas Ornaments (hereafter referred to as JCSCO).  Once again I asked for help ... click here ... because the white suggested for the house & church was just not showing up well when I attempted the stars & border.  I received many suggestions (including one I didn't publish that told me to stop whining ... thank you very much) & I decided to stitch one large star & a few smaller stars using DMC 3045 (already suggested for other design elements) & leave off the border entirely.  I didn't much care for it anyway.  I made a few other adjustments to the original design including swapping out the gray color used for the church roof, doors, & windows.  I'm sure the designer had a reason for choosing that color for those particular design elements, but what?  I decided to give the church a brown (wooden) door, brown shingles on the roof, & stained glass windows.  These were fun to figure out.  Since they are designed with very few stitches, I didn't have much room to work with ... but I thought a cross in the center of each one would be perfect   : )   

 Designer:  Threads Through Time

Design:  Christmas Village from 

1999 JCSCO

Fabric:  40 count natural linen

Floss:  DMC as suggested

Because Christmas Village was rather fiddly, I decided to choose something simple for my next ornament ... another JCSCO design.  I thoroughly enjoyed stitching this!  It's just a wee bit large for an ornament, but it would make a perfect little pillow or branch tuck   : )

Designer:  La-D-Da

Design:  Merry Christmas from

2009 JCSCO

Fabric:  As suggested by designer

Floss:  Gloriana Silk as suggested by designer

The next ornament I chose to stitch was another JCSCO offering.  This one really puzzled me.  I kitted the majority of these ornaments prior to & just after my heart surgery in September, so unless the chart copy included a colored picture of the finished ornament, I had no idea what it would look like.  As I have always tried to do, I used the exact same fabric & floss suggested by the designer.  Crescent Colours floss was suggested here.  There is a leafy branch included in the design & the floss color suggested was Green Onion.  I thought it was odd that the designer wanted me to stitch a leafy branch with off-yellow floss, but the ornament was rather nontraditional in color anyway so I tried not to give it another thought.  It really haunted me though.  After finishing the ornament, I retrieved the magazine from my files & my eyes were met with a medium green colored leafy branch.  Now I know that dye lots vary, but one lot medium green, another off-yellow?  How do you explain that?  I did make one small alteration to the design.  I am not big on dates so I replaced the date in the bottom left corner with a small cross. I think it goes with the theme of the ornament quite nicely   : ) 

Designer:  Knotted Tree NeedleArt

Design:  Peace in 2008 from 

2008 JCSCO

Fabric:  As suggested by designer

Floss:  As suggested by designer

My next choice was very simple & an absolute delight to stitch!  It's off center because of the large slub in the center of the fabric that refused to be picked out. 

 Designer:  My Big Toe Designs

Design:  Merry Christmas from

2013 JCSCO

Fabric:  As suggested by designer

Floss:  As suggested by designer

I ended February's ornament choices with a design I've been wanting to stitch since I first saw it.  It turned out to be an exercise in patience though.  The two hand-dyed colors suggested for the angel's wings & dress were basically identical.  You had to look very, very, very closely to notice any shade difference.  I decided I would use the DMC equivalents instead, but this only added to my frustration because the dress was showing up as an extremely pale blue & the wings pale green ... absolutely nothing like the magazine photo.  Now before anyone tells me that designers can't be responsible for the way their colors show up in magazine photos, let me tell you that I worked in the publishing field for many years.  Professional photographers take dozens of photos to ensure the perfect representation of the subject(s) being photographed.  Also, I have stitched other ornaments from this particular magazine page & the colors match perfectly.  Okay ... now that that's off my chest, I will move on   : )   Naturally the hand-dyed floss companies are at fault here.  I gave up on trying to attain the same look as the original ornament & opted for gold flowers & a red dress (Crescent Colours Ruby Red) for a Christmas angel.  I detest stitching with metallic thread so opted to use WDW Whiskey for the star.  If I were to stitch this again, I would redo the entire color palette, but despite the frustration, I think this one still looks pretty.

       Designer:  Little House Needleworks

Design:  Glory to God from

2008 JCSCO

Fabric:  As suggested by designer

Floss:  As suggested by designer with

substitutions as stated above

Now begins the March stitching   : )

My husband went to town this morning to pick up a few prescriptions for me at the drug store.  I told him I was in the mood for something sweet & asked if he would bring me back a little treat.  He came home with a humongous Valentine heart filled with chocolates & two little M&M hearts.  His reasoning?  "They were on sale!"  I should have asked him to bring me home a piece of jewelry   : )

It's bigger than my butt!  For now   : )

Happy Friday!!!