The Gift of Stitching ornament

Every year at about this time The Gift of Stitching Magazine puts out its annual Christmas ornament issue, and this year I’m in it! You can sort of see my ornament in the top left corner of the cover, right behind the “o”.

I started designing it when I was at the craft show that I exhibited at way back in June. At that time it was on natural coloured linen in white and green. Its gone through a few different design stages and changed a bit since then, now being in red, gold, and green on white linen. With The Gift of Stitching being a counted thread magazine, most of the ornaments are in cross stitch. Cross stitch isn’t really my thing though, but I learned lots of wonderful counted thread specialty stitches when I was writing my left-handed stitch dictionary, so I decided to use some of them and others.

My design features queen stitch (two different variations), cable stitch, and Hungarian stitch. I’ve already gone on and on about the Stitches and Spice single ply silk that I used for it in a previous post, so I won’t mention that again! And it does also use Gilt Sylke Twist for the green.

Queen stitch (used in the centre and the corners of my design) is a stitch that I was introduced to by Kirsten Edwards, the editor of The Gift of Stitching Magazine. We were visiting a craft show together a few years back and were talking about what was going to be in my new left-handed stitch dictionary, because she’s left-handed too! I had thought that the book was pretty much finished, but then she rattled off a list of counted thread specialty stitches many of which I’d never heard of! I realised at that point that the book was definitely not finished, and that I had better get going on some further research! This was my introduction to Queen stitch, and I have to say, its become a favourite. (Thanks Kirsten!)

If you’re interested in Queen stitch, you can find step by step instructions in both The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion and The Right-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion.

I’m currently still downloading the issue of the magazine itself, but I’m really looking forward to seeing the other designs presented for our stitching pleasure this month. For those of you who subscribe, I hope that you enjoy the issue!