Cross stitch Christmas tree

I fancied a bit of a change from making the block Christmas tree cards — though I do have a plan for one other set using that basic design — so I dug through my stash of dies and found my, as yet unused, little cross stitch die.

Aside: so many of the “how to tidy your craft room” articles insist that you should get rid of anything you haven’t used in the last year; if I did that I would have very little stash left other than my Copic markers. A lot of my crafting depends on me remembering about that thing I picked up ages ago and never got around to using.

Anyway, back to the cross stitch. I wanted to keep the tree theme so I set about designing a Christmas tree that could be stitched within a 16✕16 grid. Once I had a design I was happy with, all I had to do was the actual stitching. Which always takes longer than I think it should. As did adding the decorations with French knots. But I do like how it turned out.

Eventually it was done and I had to figure out how to put it onto a card; designing the main element and designing the card layout are two completely different skills. I ended up trimming it down into a square and popping that up on top of a square of metallic card with some foam tape — necessary to make space for the thread on the back of the design. Then I wrapped a piece of red ribbon around a panel of pearlised card and fixed everything to a card base with double-sided tape.

Supplies:

• cross stitch design:
  Christmas tree by me
• dies:
  Marianne Designs – CR1454
• miscellaneous:
  embroidery silks
  red satin ribbon
• paper and card:
  Papermill Direct – ivory pearlised
  Hunkydory Adorable Scorable – ruby ritz
  red mirri card
  plain white card