Christmas Squares & Turning the Corner

Here's my latest design.

It seems like I've been working on this all year long. I've been planning having it done every weekend since Thanksgiving but things kept getting in the way.

The main design is four squares. Each one has a slightly different border and a slightly different center.

I decided I needed an outer border around the squares. Typically, I'll figure out how long the border needs to be and break it up into sections. For example, a border of 70 stitches will have 10 repeats of a 7 stitch design or 7 repeats of a 10 stitch design.

In this case, I wasn't in a math mood. So, I played around with a design on graph paper until I had a repeat that I liked. I centered it over the design and repeated it past the edges on two sides. Where the designs met I simply erased stitches and added others until I came up with something I liked. This time, the plan worked out well. I like how the chain turns the corner.

This is the bottom left square and is my favorite. In the inner border, there is one green stitch in all the outer squares. It is the same green, but depending on how much white is next to it the green look different.

I stitched the design on a piece of Hopscotch Aida Cloth that I picked up at a white elephant sale. I like the way the blue border frames the red and green of the main design. The package the Hopscotch came in looked dated, but it is still available on line. However, I saw a rainbow of colors, but not the same blue I have.

This pattern is available for sale at patternsonline.

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