My Beautiful Christmas Cracker

Here are some photos of the Christmas Cracker I received from Faye. I was very strong and did not open it until Christmas morning but I forgot to take photo of it before I opened it.

Isn't the stitching just beautiful I am so lucky I love the Asian influenced fabrics.

Such pretty braids, beads, laces and 2 silkies as well.

Here is a closeup if the silkies not a very good one I am afraid but they are just beautiful in real life.

Christmas Crackers

How lucky am I here are some photos of the 2 beautiful Christmas Crackers I received in the swap. Velvets, satins, lace, beads and beautiful threads

Thank you so much Juli I just love it all and plan to do something very special for my bedroom with all the gorgeous bits and pieces.

 More of the beautiful pieces from Juli. There is a tiny little bee in the zip bag I am going to make sure she does not fly away.

Beads, threads and buttons and the prettiest little fairy silky this is just wonderful.

Here is the cracker from Suzie. So many things to play with I think I can see mermaids and fishes and all sorts of sea things trying to get out here.

 I can just see the seaweed and shells, sand and fishes and there are definitely mermaids.

There is even some foam of the surf. I am going to have a great time trying to encourage all these special things to come out and play with me.

Thank you so much to both my special swap friends. I hope the ladies I sent crackers to enjoyed theirs as much as I am enjoying mine.

Christmas Crackers are on theri way

The Christmas crackers are on their way to their new homes. I hope their new owners enjoy them as much as I did making them.

They are stuffed full of goodies and I hope they are not too badly crushed by Christmas. I have not photographed the goodies as they are a suprise for my partners. Thank you all for a great fun time.

Now to do some catch up sewing.

Christmas Crackers Finished

At last I have finished the embroidery on my Christmas cracker swap blocks. I have continued to pratice new stitches as well as this time I did a vine for the Crazy Quilting International vine challange.

The base is feather stitch with ribbon leaves, flowers (rosebuds?) and colonial knot spots. In the background you can see some of  my pratice stitches. Here are some more closeups of the embroidery on this block.

First Christmas Swap Block Finished

Here is the first of my Christmas Swap Blocks. By using the BAS stitches I was not so lost with what to do next. I had great fun creating this block but felt a little restrained because I decided not to use any beads or charms because the block looked to me as if it could be used as part of the Christmas table setting in future and the beads and other embellishments would not suit the future use. Any how here is the first block with some closeups of the individual stitches.

This is the woven cross stitch, detached chain, pistil stitch, backstitch and reverse buttonhole

Another spider and web I love doing these.

A little try at ribbon embroidery it was supposed to be a white poinsettia but looks to me more like a Christmas rose. The leaves are closed cretan stitch and the little dots are colonial knots in gold thread.

The little apricot stitches are picot buttonhole a really pretty stitch and very easy.

And last but not least is the scalloped chain but I over sewed it with the loop stitch that is used in Peking stitch. The flowers in the center are buttonhole eyelet flowers.

I will get started on the next block now although I could keep on playing with this one because there are still some blank spaces.



BAS Challange and Cracker Swap

I wanted to do the BAS challange but had little time to indulge myself; then I thought wait a minute you have signed up for the Christmas Cracker Swap with the Crazy Quilting International Group so why not use these blocks to do the challange stitches on. I started on week 60 - naturally I have always been a little backward and here is the result.
I forgot to take a photo of both the naked blocks but here is one naked and one started. I just love the Woven Cross Stitch which is the challange stitch and the herringbone and detached chain that were one of the challanges but I cant remember the number.
I hope my partners will like what I am doing.