So I’m starting it today: at 4pm Central European Time (3pm GMT for the Brits, 9am EDT for the Americans, and, sadly, 3am EST for the Aussies). I’ll post them line by line every, say, 10 minutes to my twitter feed. If you can’t join in live, search for the hashtag #tweetXS to gather them all up after. Or on my facebook page. Let’s see how it goes!

Secondly, I’m going to be playing around with this site in the next few days, so expect things to be a bit odd for a bit. I’m a long way from being any kind of web designer, so it may take a few false starts to get it all running again. It’ll look quite a bit different soon and hopefully a number of the annoying bugs I haven’t had the time or energy to straighten out before will be taken care of.

And with all that, I wish you (as the Germans say) a good slide into the New Year!

About six months ago I visited MrXStitch without, wouldyoubelieve, taking any stitching with me. So on a rainy afternoon we visited a craft shop and I picked out two wee kits to tide me over and he challenged me to try and make them my own.

The first, a cutesy little mouse, I finished that weekend and it has found a home at MrXStitch Towers.

The second I didn’t get around to finishing until I threw my back this week and found myself admiring the ceiling for a few days.

What about you? What patterns have you modded for your own purposes?

The first series to be released are The Virgins and came out of a collaboration with Berlin-based Chilean artist Karolina Kruz, the creative force behind Luciluxx. I mean, go and check out her stuff – who wouldn’t want to be able to cross stitch it?

The Virgins are very iconic, a little ironic, and show off the best of the Berlin street art vibe. There are three to choose from Maria Dolores, Maria Esperenza and Maria Inmaculada who is pictured above.  Are you starting to get a bit bored with full cross stitches? Want to push it a bit more? These designs use a lot of partial stitches – 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 stitches – which make the finished piece detailed but not too big. The patterns are printed on good quality card which will survive being pulled in and out of bags while you’re working on it and they’re also available as kits with 14 ct Aida, DMC threads and needle. Go to the shop to check them out!

Two and a half years ago TheAnticraft opened up submissions for their book and -much to my astonishment- accepted my proposal. Unfortunately,  I only found their email really close to the deadline, plus I was in Australia on holidays and I didn’t have any of the materials I needed to make it. So I trundled down to the local stitching store and had an amusing conversation with the owner as I was picking out a needlepoint canvas for the background – because I was looking for the tackiest one I could find and she was gushing over the beauty my choice. I am assuming it was good salesmanship. And then I stitched twelve hour days for several weeks. Can anyone say serious shoulder pain?

Now, after the piece flew to the States, was beautifully framed and photographed and published, I’ve got it back. I happened to have a frame which fit it (not as sexy as the one in the book unfortunately) so I’ve put it up for a while. It’s interesting looking back on a piece you haven’t seen in over two years and although I don’t tend to put my own stitching on my walls, I think I’ll keep this one up for a bit.

Stitch Graffiti

This is my new favourite summer bag. It was a surprisingly quick make, once I’d sat down and made metres and metres of bias tape. The outer layer of the bag is a really coarse kind of hessian I found ages ago and was just perfect to cross stitch on.  I used a photo of a tree frog peering through some long grass as inspiration and just took off from there. The cross stitch was done with embroidery wool and the leaves are ribbon that I also had lying around (sometimes having a ridiculous stash of fabric and thread comes in useful!).

Frog bag as modeled by Leon Dog Wonder

I kind of freehanded the bag, so it has a large back pocket and the smaller, angled front pocket where the frog sits. The whole thing is held together by bias tape I made from the same fabric and which I also made the (slightly too long) straps out of. The only thing missing is a clasp or zipper, but as a quick tote it’s perfect.