Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Stitching For The Tipsy Girls

I've talked before about our cross stitch group of five, we meet every Monday afternoon. From reference to the number of celebratory bottles of champagne we quoff every time a cross stitch piece is completed, the title The Tipsy Cross Stitchers has been born.

Every Christmas we go out to lunch (well, we go out to lunch every couple of months to be honest) and we give each other a small present. We are treated to delectable home made goodies such as rumballs, shortbread and rocky road, plus macadamia nuts straight off the tree and other treats such as nougat and little xmas plates. I used to give home made apricot jam, but since our apricot tree decided it was no longer going to be a prolific fruiter, jam has been off the gift list. So, what to give?

Back when I made a roll to store my cross stitch in a few months ago, Anne started jokingly saying that I should make everybody one for Xmas. Hmm. Hmmmmmmm, I thought, that's not a bad idea! So, I've been pondering this for a while, how to make them, what fabric to use and so on. I knew I needed to make them longer than my existing one as it only holds a medium size piece of aida cloth, so if they were a lot longer then I shouldn't put wadding in it because it would end up fat and enormous.

I was struggling with how to make these rolls look, when one night I had an epiphany which stretched into a big think for a couple of days. I decided to make them almost like a club item, using a photo of us all, and the title "The Tipsy Cross Stitchers". I had a pack of 5 sheets of photo transfer paper in the cupboard, so I got to work on the computer and made up 3 image sheets containing what I needed.

Next was lots of thinking to work out measurements. A nice glass (or two) of chenin blanc assisted. :-)


Although I was using the same fabric for everyone, I decided to give each lady her own colour scheme for the edging, her name and the closure buttons.

I ironed Vliesofix onto all the photo transfer sheets then cut out and fused it to the fabric. Then I machine stitched around the edges to hold it all in place.

I bought 5 mailing tubes from the post office and glued on thin wadding to pad them a bit and make the fabric sit a bit more snugly. Then I folded the fabric in half and stitched a seam just over 4 inches down, which gave me the right size sleeve of fabric to slide over the cardboard tube. Then I ran a seam up each side and stitched a big cross right the way across to hold both layers of fabric together nicely. Finally I added a binding across the bottom, trapping a couple of loops of elastic which looped over 2 buttons to hold the roll closed.

Da dum! Here they are.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

hehe, they're lovely! they'll love them for sure :)

Anonymous said...

Dy, it is absolutely priceless. When I showed my family what you had created, and especially how you had slotted yourself into the photo, they all agreed you are one very creative lady! Thankyou VERY much. p.s I went home and ironed my screwed up rag of cross stitching linen before I would allow it into it's new home.

Anonymous said...

oh well done! brilliant! they will love and treasure them for sure. Thanks for the comments on my blog. I can truly recommend those biscuits, they go nice and hard when cooled and they are stayed that way so would be good to give as gifts for Xmas because they will survive a few days, that is, if you hide them! :-) that cookie cutter that does the stars is this weird two part reversable thing that doesn't look at all exciting but makes such a great shape, super cute with icing in the shape I think, next time.

Liz Needle said...

Your rolls are just fabulous Dy. Hmmm. I can see a cow thing here??