Frosty

Earlier this year Carla sent me a lovely box with a whole load of lovely things in it, one of them was a Mill Hill kit for Frosty Snowman (Buttons & Beads Winter series - MH14-0304), He's such a character that I couldn't wait to start him and I had a lot of fun stitching him too.



I finished him in March but was going to photograph him in a frame and was having trouble finding one the right size so kept putting it off, then I realised that actually I shouldn't frame him before photographing as then the beads wouldn't show as much as they do when unframed.

I did make a few changes from the original pattern:

I was supposed to use 3 threads for all of the white and the very lightest blue, but only did 3 threads for Frosty himself, after that I did 2 because it made stitching easier for me as the thread lengths are very long and when doubled are perfect in length but when not doubled it's painfully long. It also makes Frosty look whiter than the snow around him which I like.
I used Kreinik #4 braid for the letters as I wanted to sparkle a bit more - and it worked beautifully, the letters really sparkles in the light.
I only used 1 thread to thread the needle for beading as I was unable to get 2 threads into the tiny hole of the needle, and as it's not for use and can't be washed I knew it wouldn't matter much and it also made the bead attaching easier as less threads means it goes through the beads more easily.
I only did a full cross stitch through some of the petite beads as it was annoyingly difficult to do and it hurt my wrists, after that I switched to just a half cross stitch and to be honest I don't really see much difference in how they lie on the paper.

It took quite a while to stitch, and I have to admit I missed my hoop as I spent most of my time worrying about creasing the paper by accident. I also had to do the back stitching more slowly as normally I work only on the top of the fabric when back stitching, and this can't be done safely (as far as I know) on paper.

Size: 5"x 5"
Stitches: 71 stitches square
Fabric: Perforated paper
Threads: 10 colours.
Beads: 6 different colours of Mill Hill beads, of which 2 are petite size.

All in all it was a fun stitch to make :)