My New Sampler Book - A 'Sneaky Peek'!

Here's a 'sneaky peek' of some sketches of my designs that are included in my new 'Cross Stitch Samplers' book:

Close ups of four of the designs

It's going to include the charts for 15 cross-stitch sampler designs. You can stitch the whole design, or just pick out individual motifs to make a smaller design.

There are lots of different themes in the book. Below is the sketch for my seaside sampler:

Seaside motifs

Another theme includes 'retro' inspired china coffee cups, teacups and patterns:

Retro china motifs

And a sealife set of motifs.... with dolphins, a whale, lots of tropical fishes, corals and seahorses..

There's many other themes included in the book too. Here's the front cover of the book:

 

You can see it featured on this Turkish website:  http://www.tuvayayincilik.com/kanavice-motif-kitabi--u

Blue Hydrangeas Cross Stitch

I've finally finished sewing the blue Hydrangeas cross-stitch design from Veronique Enginger's book 'L'Herbier du Jardin au Point de Croix'... it's only taken me well over a year to stitch it... well, the shades of blue were very similar, so that's my excuse!

My stitching

Cover of book by Veronique Enginger

Close up of my stitching

 Now I'm wondering what to do with it.. I've got some lovely fabrics in shades of blues so I was thinking I might make it into a cushion with a patchwork style border. Patchwork seems to be quite fashionable lately and well I can't say I'm an expert but I could make a simple square border to frame my stitching..a bit like the patchwork quilts below..

Blue and white quilt

Blue hydrangeas are such lovely flowers - the blue is quite unusual in flowers and you can't go wrong with a blue and white colour scheme :-)

Close up of Hydrangea flowers

Blue and white china

These are my fabrics that I'm thinking of using for the patchwork border:

Shades of blue

I found the fabric below in a charity shop and was thinking I could maybe incorporate this into the patchwork - it's a tablecloth and it's got little printed crosses on it that imitate cross-stitch. It's very sweet - but maybe I'll save it for something else, I'm not sure yet....I might stick to a totally blue and white colour scheme, I'll see how it works out!

Imitation cross-stitch on old tablecloth

One last lovely blue and white image... :-)

Hyacinths and blue and white china

Designs for a new book...

I've been working on a new book which will contain 15 different cross-stitch sampler designs.
The motifs can be stitched as individual motifs, or you can stitch the whole design.

Here's one of the sets of designs from thebook, featuring flowers, birds, blossoms, treehouses and nests..

 

The book includes many different motifs and themes. It'll be on sale soon, hopefully!