Preparing To Stitch

I'm just getting ready to start a bigger cross stitching project. The plan is to embroider something that I can use to cover the top of a footstool. The stool has two drawers which I am going to use to store some small stitching accessories. 

I wanted a pattern that would allow me to pick out and use some of the motifs on needlework accessories.

I must admit that I've struggled to find the right pattern. I'm spoilt for choice as I have a huge stash of patterns. I've spent hours pondering. I'd go to bed confident that I had decided, only to change my mind in the morning! 

Eventually, I narrowed it down to two - a shaker set of box lid, pin cushion, scissor keep and needle book shown in Just Cross Stitch a while ago and an LHN pattern I've had for a couple of years called 'Home of A Needleworker Too.' It was a tough decision but I went with the LHN pattern. 

I've chosen cream Aida for this project as it is sturdier than linen. 

I've blanket stitched the edges to stop it fraying. Here it is clipped to my lap frame. 

You might recognise my needle case and bobbin holder in the picture from earlier posts. I'm using DMC threads and I've tweaked the colour scheme slightly. I wanted more reds and greens and less brown and blue. 

I'll be stitching the pattern without further amendment.

I'll share my progress with you in a few weeks.

My First Triple Pleat Curtains

This month I've been working on the curtains for the new bedroom. 

I think I visited every fabric shop in the vicinity before I finally found a fabric that I liked in the right colours. I've chosen some silky woven fabric with a pattern of trees in brown and blue. 

Whilst out fabric hunting I saw some curtains with a triple pleat heading in one of the fabric shops. The heading had been accentuated with a contrasting covered button below each set of pleats. I adored them. 

Now I've made curtains in the past but I normally stick to pencil pleat. This time I decided to be a bit more daring. 

I began to experiment making those triple pleats. The options were to make the pleats manually or to use a specialist heading tape and pins. I went for the latter. 

Normally I stitch the pencil pleat heading tape close to the top of the curtain. I found out the hard way that you have to leave more space below the top of the curtain when using the triple pleat tape... If you don't leave enough the top of the pins shows when the curtain is hanging. This happened to me and it was not a good look. I spent an hour or so unpicking stitching on my first curtain and started again. I won't make that mistake again!

In addition to the triple pleat header tape I used thermal, black out lining for the first time. The black out lining really works but I found it very heavy and unpleasant to work with - especially on the double width curtains. 

I normally let curtains hang a while before I hem the bottom. In this case I'm also using my favourite craft clips to train the triple pleats to hold together and hang nicely. 

When I take them down to hem I plan to add some embellishment to each triple pleat. Meantime, here is a picture of one of the newly made curtains.

Here is a closer view of those pleats.

Lavender Sachet

This gorgeous fellow was stitched from a magazine pattern call 'Birds of Beauty' designed by Lesley Teare. It is part of a series for a coaster, notebook and bookmark shown in Cross Stitch Crazy issue 166. 

This is the pattern for the coaster.

I substituted some metallic threads and added the design on the back and the bead edging. 

Do you like him?