A couple of years ago I crosstiched a bouquet of poppies. I bought a cushion crosstiching packet including the preprinted fabric and yarns from online. Winter went by swiftly crosstiching the cushion. The handicraft was easy to start because I did not have to count threads of the fabric. It suited well for the beginner like me. Still I can´t crosstich orthodoxly but I don´t mind. However, the end result is satisfactory. There was not enough woolen yarn, because the unorthodox stiches demanded more yarn than the producer expected, but I used the yarn guarantee and ordered some more.
The end result was not perfect. In the middle of off-white background there is a row of white stiches. I messed up with the yarn colors. I stitched the row with a yarn meant for daisies before I noticed my mistake. Then it was too late to undo the row. Luckily the mistake is in relatively unnoticeable place and cannot be seen in the photo. It only shows that the cushion is done by hand.
Source: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net, papaija2008
This crosstiching cushion was half done fairly long in my closet, because I didn´t have a sewing machine to sew a fabric and a zipper behind the cushion. At last in the fall of 2013 I participated a sewing class and this cushion was the first handicraft that I finished with the help of a teacher. She told me the tricks how to saw the zipper. I also learned how to use overlocker which I used for the seams of the back side fabric.
I made the back side from recycled fabric. I had an apron that I did not use. It was stained for good during some ancient cooking experiment. The stains were ruthless in white fabric. It was also decorated with an ad. So it was not a big thing to cut the fabric of the apron which was given to me by me godmother. I cut the fabric so that the stains would go inside the seams. There is another useless apron waiting in the closet…
Photo frame and piece of art
The cushion continued my interest in crosstiching poppies that had begun many years earlier. In the turn of the century, I saw a beautiful poppy pattern in a crosstiching book. So I became inspired to do a photo frame for my old matriculation examination photo. I bought the materials and started the task. Counting holes and threads of the fabric was not easy for the beginner – it was a challenge that I overcame. The photo frame turned out just nice even though I did not have embroidery frame. To finalize my work I framed the poppies and the photo in professional. The only sad part was that the photo frame and matching piece of crosstiching art became slightly different sizes when framed.
My whimsy of crosstiched poppies did not end on the photo frames because I also stitched a piece of poppy art with the pattern of the same book. I have not hanged these pictures to my wall but perhaps I will own someday a house of my dreams where the pictures find their place in the walls. You can´t hang the pictures side by side because the slight difference in size but I could try to hang them above each other. Then the difference could go without noticing.
House of hobbies 