Difficulty: ★★
Time taken: 8 hours each
Completed size: 5 inch x 2.5 inch
A small project from last Christmas. Decided to challenge for myself with a Mill Hill cross stitch.
Stitching with beads usually takes more paitent than normal cross stitches.
Here are the 2 kits I decided to work on.
Started off with the Celeste Angel. The kit included 2 needles, beads, sorted floss, 14ct paper, satin robbin and an instruction chart. A thread remover and a cross stitch scissors would also come handy during my stitching project.
There were only 2 pieces of paper, and it would be difficult to mark or fold on the papers. Therefore planning became very important as you don't want to stitch half way and realise that you have ran over the edge.
The head and body should be stitched on the smaller piece of paper and the wings on the larger piece. I would recommend everyone to start from the edges first.
And of course, I started with the darker coloured floss first.
My rule when stitching a beaded cross stitch is:
Dark colour floss -> Light colour floss -> Dark colour bead -> Light colour bead
I like to keep my beads and stitches in one direction so they look persistent. The floss went behind from the lower left corner into the upper right corner, then behind from the lower right corner into the upper left corner. Similarly with the beads, the floss went behind from the lower left corner through the bead into the upper right corner, then behind from the lower right corner through the bead into the upper left corner.
Chopping the paper was slightly a challenge as the shape of the design was pretty comprehensive. That's when my cross stitch scissors became handy!! If you don't want to risk breaking the paper, I would highly recommend you leave some extra spaces around the design ( I left 1 stitch of space, but I think even leaving 2 stitches wouldn't effect the overall look)
I've attached a furry ball onto each of the design. Here is a photo of the completed projects.
The charms now take turns to sit in my car:)
