Just a quick post to share with you what I am making up for last minute Christmas Presents incase you need some ideas. Ok so the story is that they were selling off pieces of embroidery that belonged to a member of our guild who had passed on and I saw this little canvas work picture and thought to myself ” Thats so pretty, I will never do something like that” so I bought it. When I got home my children (who do not enthuse over my needle painting) were crazy about it and said they would like something like that, so I looked at it under my magnifying glass and decided to give it a go and try make them one each for Christmas.
I don’t think there is any copyright on it because I searched the net for a kit or something similar and did not find anything – apparently it was a design from the Netherlands many years ago.Basically you can do what you want – I looked up canvas stitches in some of my books and used spider web flowers, french knots and lazy daisy stitches for the flowers and leaves. All very simple nothing complicated. The background is done in rows of straight stitches or slanted stitches and the base in cushion stitch squares. I used whatever threads I had in the draw, some of my lovely Gloriana threads and also just DMC stranded cotton.
I traced a rough outline onto a piece of 22 count canvas – each picture is small about 6 x 8cm (2 1/2″ x 3″) and used 3 strands of cotton with a No 24 cross stitch needle. They only take about 2 days to stitch and I have done some in pairs to be framed together and others just on their own – they have gone to the framers and I asked them to supply me with a few extra cut outs in case I need to make up one in a hurry. (I will post a pic when they come back from the framers).
Here are some photos of the one I bought – the first is the full set framed together and the other two are enlargements so that you can click on them and have a good look at the stitches . Hope this gives you some ideas let me know how you get on. Trish
