Ornament of the Month & Tons of Tiny February editions + finishes

 

I'm going to start with my ornaments from my Ornament of the Month project. The patterns were already posted on the NCC International Headquarters site (click the button above) so you can rush over and grab them if you like what you see.
This months Birthstone is amethyst so I went for the purples that you see so often in these stones. As the month is February I decided that a wink to Valentines day was ok. Hearts are also popular during Christmas as it stands for loving your family, friends and neighbours. I included a little candy backstitch on each of the corners as candy is a favourite during both Valentines and Christmas.

For the beading I used some amazing TOHO permanent finish silver lined amethyst size 11/0 seed beads which I sewed down with the darkest purple thread. I managed to get my hands on some lovely amethyst pieces that had a hole drilled through and I chose 2 to use for the ornaments. A larger drop shaped one for the tassel of the bigger ornament and a really light one as the pendant bead on the garland finish ornament.

Since I can imagine people wondering how those long ears on the garland ornament work I decided to make a photo of the January and February ornaments linked.

While I was taking photo's of the February ornament I decided to also take new photo's of the January one as the original photo's were made indoors after dark. And I also took the following photo so you can see the two together.

Stats: 
Size: 3 inches along each side for the bigger ornament and 2 1/4" for the smaller one.
Fabric: 16ct antique white Aida
Colours used: DMC 550, 552, 553 and medium purple craft thread for the loops.
Beads: TOHO size 11 Permanent Finish silver lined milky amethyst and a real amethyst
Pattern can be found here: Ornament of the Month - February

Next month's pattern will be posted on the NCCIH site on Friday 6th March.

This month I am a bit early with posting the Tons of Tiny but I decided to do a 2 in one post as my ornaments also count for Tons of Tiny. What is Tons of Tiny? In short it's a SAL where you stitch small projects and talk about them and hopefully also send your used and useful patterns on to someone else who might enjoy them. Last month I had 3 to talk about, this month I have quite a few more to add to that total.

First of all is the scissor keeper and fob that I made using a kit from CrossStitcher, you can read all about it in my blog post I have been informed that this counts as 2 items for ToT.

Just around the time I finished this my much delayed January issue arrived with another little kit in it. Again I had a bit of bad luck with it as the metal necklace pendant the cross stitch was supposed to go into was broken - the hanger bit that had been spot welded on had not been welded properly and had dropped off in transit. However the metal bit has been very useful to put seed beads in while beading so it's quite handy to have it! I turned the fabric and some of the thread into a lasso bookmark for my youngest son.

These were really the only colours he liked from the kit so unfortunately the letter isn't as clear as it might have been I added a lot of backstitching in an attempt to make it stand out more.

This little initial is 22 stitches square on 14ct white Aida and uses 3 colours.

Next up is this lovely little owl ornament . I found the cross stitch pattern for this a while ago and kept it in a tab so I'd not forget to make it (things that go to bookmarks tend to get lost, even though I am careful about sorting them lol). I decided that it was madness to keep the tab open till autumn so decided I may as well make it and then I would have a Halloween ornament ready well before time for a change as more often than not I never get round to it.

I decided to do the pattern on black Aida and use variegated thread to make the design itself, so I reversed the pattern. I had some trouble with the pattern at first as the designer did not use the standard 10 square grid but a grid of 14, 15, 15, 5 so I re-charted it and worked from that instead.

The pattern is free and can be found here

Stats:
Size: 41 stitches square
Finished size: 3 3/4"
Fabric: Black 14 ct Aida
Floss: Cosmo variegated thread 8034

That brings the total of small projects to 6 for this month and 9 in total. Funnily enough I haven't managed to do much on my bigger projects this month.

Now on to the patterns I shall be offering this month to whoever puts their name down for them. Last month Leonore was sent the Daffodils and Carla will be sent the dog rose soon. The other pattern was not asked for so that will go back into the box for a later date.

This month's theme is Paddington. I have 3 little patterns for him all of which are stitched with DMC colours.

The one on the left was a freebie with a magazine, meant to entice you to buy a bigger pattern that this was taken from, on it's own it's fun too though. 8 colours, whole and back stitching. no grid so I'm not sure of the size.

The middle one is Paddington sitting on his suitcase with a lollypop, made by Permin of Copenhagen. It's 33 stitches wide x 42 stitches high, whole and backstitches, 8 colours. It also contains an alphabet and 0-9 numbers. Downside of this pattern: I used a red ballpoint pen to mark where I stitched however you can still clearly see the symbols.

On the right is the smallest of the lot - 19 stitches x 30 stitches, 5 colours - they are not listed as DMC numbers but it uses the same colours as the other Permin Paddington pattern so I'll write down which number floss is what.


I will be sending one of these to 3 people, just comment with which one you'd like and I'll get in touch with the new homes for snail mail addy's some time next week. Please note that you are only supposed to request one of these if you are planning on making it yourself as part of the Tons of Tiny project, these patterns are not for resale! If you were given a pattern in the month before you can still join in!

If more than one person asks for the same pattern I'll write the names on a bit of paper, drop them in a jar and let one of the kids pull a name.