Erica's Stitches

I keep all my cross-stitch charts in a file cabinet.  I haven't been in there too much recently so I pulled out my favorite folder:  Minis It's filled with free charts and smaller chart cards. I picked the Acorns and Pines Sampler from Little House Needleworks. I've been doing too much crafty sewing and not enough cross-stitching.  So, I'll probably work on a few of these for a while.  I saw some Christmas patterns in there that look like fun.

Here's my Christmas ornament for this year. I wanted it to have a house so I started with my house.  The front of the house is rather boring, so I used the side view.  And I changed the proportions.   And changed the color (a green house with a green tree in front of it just won't work).  Speaking of a tree, I had to add a better looking one.  I wanted snowflakes around the house, but nothing I tried looked right.  So, I added a simple border and then extended it.  All the sudden I had circles where I could add eyelets and I had snowflakes.  I originally planned on eyelets along the top.  But, once I started stitching I squeezed in an eyelet anywhere I could. That means that there are partial eyelets along the edge of the house that required some compensating. I also had some negative space around the circles with room for 5 letters. I used P-E-A-C-E and squeezed the year into another negative space. ...