Craft day.

This year I decided not to celebrate my birthday with dinner or drinks. Instead, today I celebrated by having a craft day with my crafty girlfriends at my home. We ate, we stitched, and we enjoyed each others company.

I already count myself lucky to have these girls in my life, but the cherry on the top really is that they are just as crafty as me!

Mill worked on her trademark Christmas stars. This year she is planning on making many to give as gifts, and has given herself the deadline of November 25 to have 20 complete. Every star she makes is a different combination of colours for the felt, thread and beads. They look really beautiful hanging on the Christmas tree as the lights reflect on the tiny beads.

Renae has been working on this cross stitch for a while now, remember I blogged about it here? Well, today we got to watch her complete the final stitches! I am really looking forward to what it will look like framed and hanging on her wall. Her next project is a similar theme but with an adult and baby giraffe.

Mel's blanket continues to grow and grow. I absolutely love the colour combination she has chosen!

I wanted some light craft today. I had seen a red and white Christmas decoration on a tree in the October issue of Country Living Magazine (British) and had a try at copying it. My heart turned out quite a different shape but I am happy with the end result. This will be my handmade Christmas decoration for 2010!

Beautiful books given to me by Mel - thank you!!!

Sam xox

Renae's cross stitches.

On Saturday night my good friend Renae came over for dinner and some craft. You see, Renae has been bitten by the cross stitch bug, actually, more than bitten, I would say more like gobbled up by it! She has many projects on the go at once (don't we all) but what impressed me most was how quickly she gets her stitching done!

I was lucky enough to see a couple of her pieces, and I took some photos so I could show you all too.

This is a cross stitch of an elephant and its baby. Renae has only just started this one.

This cute little possum (I hope) is a native Australian cross stitch. Renae spent hours trying to figure out how to make the French knots for his eyes!

This masterpiece is a gift for Renae's Grandmother for Mothers Day. I love this piece ssooooo much! Can you see all the cute little quilt blocks?

I have one very clever friend!

Sam xox

Cross stitch.

I have been working on a sampler cross stitch these last few weeks, as it is so much easier to just pick it up and do a few stitches, then having to pull out all my sewing so I can sew or quilt.

I found this book at Boarders a fornight ago and fell in love with it.

It literally has 2001 diffrent cross stitch designs inside. It is really cool because you can pretty much design any cross stitch you want from this book. It has different themes, a section on boarders, and a variety of sampler patterns.

I chose this pattern because it only requires two different coloured threads. I have to admit, this thing I dont enjoy with cross stitching is when you have to keep changing your thread colour. I appreciate it is important to a design to have a variety of colours, as it looks so much better, especially in things like flowers. But this is a simple sampler, and I think only having the two colours makes it very striking.

So far I have finished the 'M' pannel and I am beginning the 'N' panel.

Sam xox