2022 Christmas Countdown - A Treasured Time

Day 9 - A Treasured Time by Dimensions Gold Collection.

This scene is so different to Christmas in New Zealand.  We go to the beach at Christmas and have our summer holidays, but I've always loved these snowy Christmas scenes so I decided to stitch one for myself.  

I love the finished effect, but I can't say I totally enjoyed stitching it.  Dimensions Gold designs are on stitched on aida cloth and I much prefer evenweave or linen.  I considered swapping out the provided fabric, but linen would not have given the same result.  As you can see below, some areas are left unstitched and the colour of the aida provided was perfect. Anyway, it's finished and framed now, and that's what counts.  

I do love the idea of ice skating on a frozen pond with a muff to keep my hands warm.  I have been ice skating, but I've never owned a muff.  

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below.  

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Treasured Time is finished and framed!

Yes, I'm delighted to say that my Christmas embroidery is back from the framers and hanging on the wall.
 

I'm thrilled with how it turned out.  I love the ornate frame, which is actually made from combining two frames (don't ask about the cost!).

It's very hard to take a photo of a square object! So please forgive any wonkiness in these photos.  The frame is perfectly straight.

It's a lovely feeling to have this framed and on the wall for Christmas.  Although I love the style of this design, I'm not going to start anything else like this for at least another year. (You can remind me of that!!)

You can read more about this kit, and how I stitched quarter each quarter of the year, in my earlier blog post here. The pattern is "A Treasured Time" by Dimensions Gold, and the threads and fabric were included in the kit.

Merry Christmas everyone.

A Treasured Time

This time last year I took the plunge and started an embroidery design I had been admiring for quite some time.  It's a special Christmas scene called "A Treasured Time" by Dimensions Gold Collection.

Although I've stitched many cross stitch designs in the past, this is different because it's mainly stitched in half cross stitches and it's on Aida, whereas I'm more used to stitching on linen and evenweave.

I've seen many Russian ladies stitching designs like this on Instagram, and I though it would lovely to have my own piece hanging on the wall at Christmas time.

The stitching is very dense, and there are frequent colour changes, so it's taken me longer than I expected to finish this piece, but it's going to be beautiful when it's framed.

The lovely shading comes about by the frequent blending on threads.  Often three strands are used at once, two of one colour, and one of a completely different colour, but it all works out in the end.

I decided that if I was going to have this piece finished for Christmas 2017 I would need to work on one quarter of the design each quarter of the year.   That worked well for me, but I left all the backstitching and French knots to the end, and that has taken me longer than I expected.  In my mind I thought the backstitching might take a week, but it's actually taken three weeks.  My elbow hurt at times from pushing the needle through the very dense stitching.

But as you can see from this photo, the backstitching really brings out the design.  Compare the windows on the right to those on the left - a huge difference.

I'm hoping to get it finished this weekend, and off to the framers early next week.  I don't know if they can do it time for Christmas or not, but I will be happy to have achieved my goal of finishing it by Christmas 2017.