Xmas stitching in August; another UFO and a favorite

 Hello Stitching Friends!

This weekend I decided to give some love and attention to another old project from my pile of stitching UFOs. Yet again it's a Christmas themed piece. Well, what can I say... I admit, I love everything Christmas🎅🎄😉!

So this is a table cloth. Actually, I have no idea why I bought this one back in the day. I love the pattern and the overall look of it, but I cannot imagine stitching everything four times😩😬. I just don't know what I was thinking...?! Maybe it was on discount; that would explain it... Apparently, I also decided to stitch it on 11-count aida instead of 14-count, so I clearly wanted it bigger than the original. I don't really mind that; it is easier to stitch on the 11-count aida anyway. However, I had decided to still stitch with two strands of thread instead of three so the coverage isn't perfect. But I can live with that too.

However, it didn't take me long to realise that I had used the wrong red shade for the border, so I started by unpicked the bright red border stitches. Luckily I hadn't stitched that much of it...

 

So, it turns out that I started to stitch this table cloth before I started to sew gridlines on all my projects, and now I just cannot imagine stitching anything without my gridlines so I had to add some before I could continue with anything else. 

However, I didn't grid all the fabric; it's a time consuming process and I decided to grid the fabric in sections. Then I made a start on one of the corners...

...and it is looking great so far. It's a fairly simple pattern with few colours and hardly any backstitching...there's just a lot of it, haha😁. But at least it's out of the box of shame...

I've also stitched some more on another Xmas pattern; my favorite at the moment. I'm stitching this one with three threads since the kit comes with 11-count fabric, which means that I can't use the loop start. Which in turn means that I try to anchor the thread in previous stitches. 

And now I've finally reached the elaborate Xmas border and could make a start on it.

I just love this one and so far I'm quite determined to finish this beauty for Xmas this year since I have great plans for it😉🤞.

I've also made a start on sorting out some of my old DMC/Anchor threads. I have leftover threads from old projects lying around and with my stash dwindling fast, I need to make the most of what I DO have.

   

So I got some cheap cardboard floss bobbins and have made a start at least.

Definitely a work in progress but I really like how efficient and organized it makes me feel😂.

Hope you are all doing ok? 

Happy Stitching Everyone💝!

Annie