Recently completed

I know it is early August, but as a stitcher it is never to early to be thinking about Christmas. I even know of people who start the year's Christmas cards in January to get ahead of the game. Rest assured, I'm not that bad. However, while tidying out the last of the boxes from the house move (yes, I know that was six years ago) I came across this tablecloth in a back issue of Cross Stitcher magazine. Once again I was seized by the "must do". I felt that with this I could make it for myself, a lot of the cute things feel like they should be made for youngsters, but a tablecloth! That's a fun project I can do for myself.


I was worried that 8 years down the line I wouldn't be able to find the tablecloth on which to stitch this, but I shouldn't have worried. Another of my favourite stores, Willow Fabrics, were able to supply it for me and I was able to get stuck into the sewing the following weekend.

The pattern suggested that as the stitch count was roughly 10hpi to use 3 strand, but I used 4. Firstly to give better coverage, but also because I prefer to use the loop method to start my threads, this makes for a much neater reverse, and I felt this to be imperative where the back of the item was going to be visible.

There are four penguin motifs repeated twice round the border, and a limited palette of colours. I wasn't paying too much detail to how long each one took, but at a guess I'd say about four hours each.

Margaret Sherry's animals are so charismatic, I have so many designs on my "want to do" list. I'm even tempted to keep these guys out and stitch them on 14hpi for use on cards. One of the nice things about doing small designs such as this is it doesn't really matter if you don't have the exact shade the pattern has. If you don't have green 265, there is no harm in using 256