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Wednesday 4 September 2013

The Prairie Schooler: Nordic Holiday 1 & 2 / 9

Woohoo! My new festive cross stitch project has begun :) Series: The Prairie Schooler "Nordic Holiday"  - it's a 9 piece Christmas decoration set. Once I'd got the chart in my hands, I just couldn't wait till I have the threads and fabric to start stitching. One Saturday my bf took me to a lovely local embroidery shop hidden up in the Welsh hills and there I purchased a piece of the cream 32 count Jobelan evenweave and the DMC threads. The shade of the green colour surprised me a bit as in real it's much like a fresh green rather than a dark pine green from the picture but I like all shades of green and I'm sticking to the original colours from the chart.


I have stitched the 1st two pieces. Both feature the reindeer :)


I'll be showing you my progress bit by bit - that is the finished stitches themselves first. When I'm done with all 9, I shall move on to make them into decorations, all in one go. They will be ironed, folded, hot gun glued and made into padded pictures backed with felt.  The last stage will be making a wooden display frame for them. My bf promised to help with it. I've got a certain idea for it but we shall see how it comes out. 




Currently I'm working on the 3rd motif - the 2 Christmas birds (turtle doves perhaps?) For the first time I've turned to a quick fraying solution - a masking tape on the edges of the fabric :) This lovely Jobelan evenweave is great to stitch on but it frays so easily! This is what it looks like when taken off an embroidery hoop.



I'm really enjoying stitching all those little festive characters. Can't wait to see all of them put together on display!

10 comments:

  1. I am sure that you probably know better than me, but for tapestry I use a straight sided frame so that you wind the ends round a rod and then roll it up and down as you work. I wondered if something like that would help with not having the hoop marks - the fabric is just stretched flat - and also help with the fraying as you are not touching the edges so much?

    As I say, I am pretty much a novice, but I just wondered. The ones that you have done look beautiful and so evenly worked. Looking forward to seeing the finished product!

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    Replies
    1. Hi
      thank you for the comment and suggestion :)
      I do have a square embroidery hoop with clip-ons as well as 2 wooden scrolls :) but they are all for large projects. These stitches are tiny when compared to my cross stitch tapestry scrolls- they are only 10 cm x 6 cm so even on the 10cm embroidery hoop I struggle with stitching them.

      the hoop marks will go once the stitches are washed and ironed, no worry. You wont see a thing :) They show in the photo though as its WIP - work in progress so nothing's ready yet :)

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  2. These are looking great so far :) I'm planning to stitch a few of these designs this month too.

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  3. Dear Marta,
    you are such a busy bee :O)
    Wonderful embroidery patterns you did again! I love this Green and Red!
    Happy day to you and happy stiching :O)
    Big hugs
    Claudia

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  4. They're lovely. What I like about them is the minimum use of colours. Simply but very effective xx

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  5. I love these patterns. Christmassy colours and pretty Nordic patterns.

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  6. Beautiful cross stitch.
    luv
    irene
    xxxx

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  7. Lovely motifs, especially the reindeers :) the first one is very original, never saw before.
    Your Christmas works are coming out very nice and I look forward to the next creations!

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  8. Lovely reindeers. Thanks for the inspiration: this year I am making ornaments in red and white and why not some cross-stitch based? Thanks and thanks.

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