Stitching Friends Forever

December Week One
Styling with Stitches
Welcome

It's the most wonderful time of the year.  We are all busy shopping, baking and planning for the holidays.  But, this time of the year is also a season of Hope which is so important to many of us. May the holidays be blessed and special to all. 
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Welcome
We would like to welcome Meg who is a cross stitcher with a new blog named
Live to Stitch to the stitching community.    She is a lovely lady with a really nice blog with great stitches to view.   Please go over and say hello and enjoy her great photos.  
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Styling with Stitches
It's time for our second pillow pinafore and word play combo.   Mary made an adorable Christmas pinafore and I made the December word play.  We are excited to show you our first Christmas cross stitch projects.   They are fun to make and we hope you will give them a try too.   


RJ's Word Play
I've stitched the December word play by Brenda Gervais.   I wanted to make it a little different than just sewing it together.  There are a lot of trees on this stitch so I added a lot of tree elements to the finish.  I sewed a strip of tree fabric under the stitch and added a wool tree applique with a small jingle bell. In between the stitch and the fabric, I added some green cotton ric rac and stitched some rust bells on the bottom.  Green silk ribbon with a tree charm on the left side is used for the hanger.

This was one of the quicker word plays and a joy to stitch!   Except for the called for linen which I hated.   It came wrinkled and no matter how much I pressed it...it stayed that way.   If I made them again I would use a different linen.  

It is a rainy and very gloomy day so I took a lot of closeups of parts of the word play so you can see it.    I wish I got better photos today.    

December word play hanging on a bookcase

Closeup of top

Closeup of bottom with ric rac, rusty jingle bells and applique

Closeup of tree applique with a running stitch.  I think my trunk is kinda wide...need to fix that.

Closeup of tree charm attached to bow.  It is from Boheminan Findings on Etsy.

December Word Play
by With thy Needle and Thread
35 ct Abecedarian linen
called for overdyed threads
bells from Amazon
charm from Etsy

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Mary's Pinafore

For my first pinafore project, I stitched Letters for Santa by Brenda Gervais.  I wanted to finish the stitch a bit differently than as shown on the pattern.  So, I did not dye the linen or ticking as suggested because I wanted a more colorful pillow for my Christmas Decor. I sewed up a quick envelope pillow cover in ticking and then made my pinafore out of a red burlap runner.  I really scored buying the runner for only $2 in an after Christmas sale at Michaels.   I layered the stitch with a check fabric I had on hand and added  the pompoms as trim.  I used snowflake buttons on the back from my stash.  The burlap is held together by small Velcro ovals made for fabric.  

This pinafore easily stores away and lets me use my pillow for another project. My festive Christmas pillow makes me very happy!

Here it is...my first pinafore!

It will make it's home on my LR sofa

It attaches in the back with Velcro 

I used snowflake buttons for decoration on the back of the pinafore

Letters from Santa
by With Thy Needle and Thread
22 ct. Ariosa linen two over two
called for overdyed threads
pom pom fringe from my stash

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Hope you all enjoyed the pinafore and word play combo.  Next week we will be showing our new Christmas ornaments for this year.   We really appreciate you coming by to see us and taking the time to leave a comment especially during this busy time of the year.     Happy Stitching!           RJ and Mary

I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

Charles Dickens