Ornament of the Month - April And Tons of Tiny

This month's Birthstones are Diamond and CZ. As they are both more or less the same thing to look at with the untrained naked eye (I'm sure there are people out there who can tell the difference at 10 feet but I for one can't tell the difference unless an expert tells me hehe) I decided to do just one colour this month. The inspiration was diamonds themselves and how they have facets and sparkle so much. This resulted in a LOT of backstitching, a bit more than I like to be honest which is why this blog post is so very late, I kept thinking "I'll be done soon and can post both together". However the back stitching seemed to last for months!

Here you can see how much back stitching there is - over 60 inches of it! But I have to admit that it really looks nice once completed. This being the garland finish it's 2 1/4" square. This month I finished the edges with some of the beads Carla sent me as they looked perfect for the job and the pendant is one of the string of Swarovski bicones my bf sent me as a surprise in March. I did the stitches of the "diamond" elements a bit differently on the garland finish than I had done for the ornament that I'd finished first as I decided to do all of the stitches into the centre instead of huge stitches across going round in a circle.

Here you can see how I'd originally intended it, but in a way it's nice to have small differences in these things and shows there is no one way to do it. As always I have made the ornament finish a bit bigger by using the border I made for the wall hanging around it which makes it 3" square. I used the same beads and bicone for the decoration of the ornament.

Both designs are stitched on 16ct antique white Aida with 3 colours of DMC - pattern can be found here: Ornament of the Month - April - The hanging loops are made with DMC 762

The more curious of you might be wondering how the garland looks by now - I had the same thought so got them all out, strung them together in the order I made them and hung them on my obliging apple tree and this is the result:

They might seem a bit far apart but if you consider that they may be draped around a Christmas tree or hung across the room and there will be only 12 of them then you can see why I'd want them to be spread out a bit.

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Now for the Tons of Tiny section! 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 offered 4 tiny cat patterns and Carla was the person who asked for and will be getting them! Linda, sorry I keep meaning to sit down and translate the instructions before sending the Paddington patterns to you - I will make it happen this week!

This month I have done a bit more than I will count now as I have not yet posted about them and want to do them in a separate post, I will count these next month.

Since my last Tons of Tiny post I have been busy making things. Of course my Ornaments that you can see above are part of this but I won't post the photo's again so close to the others hehe.

 Then there is the needle book I made during the last IHSW - you can find the pattern here: Pattern: Blue floral needle book

There is my double sided scissor fob for the Fob a Month project, you can find the pattern here: A Fob a Month - 1.
Carla has decreed that a double sided fob counts as 2 Tiny's so this project counts as 2.

And last of all the Sophie Card that was a freebie from the CrossStitcher magazine a couple of months ago, there is stitching under the dress that was ironed on with fusible interfacing but you can't see it on the photo - I even back stitched a belly button!

All in all I added another 6 Tiny projects to my total which brings my overall total to 17.

This month's patterns that are on offer are a clown with a balloon (I don't have a cover photo on hand so used the actual embroidery for the photo) and Miffy with a ball. Neither pattern has a colour code but I will give suggestions for each and you could even do the clown using colours of your own! Please note that these are used patterns that I coloured in with pencil and have since used a rubber (that's an eraser for the American's out there ;) ) to remove as much as I can - the patterns are still legible.

I will be sending one of these to 2 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 (at the latest by the next Tons of Tiny post). 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.