Friday Freebie: Fob a Month - April

Welcome to the fourth edition of the Fob a Month for 2018! This month the pattern was inspired by tulips... and not just any tulips but black tulips! It's always been a source of amusement to me that what people call black tulips are generally (but not always) more like really dark purple or red tulips called black tulips as they are the holy grail of tulip colour, so I chose really dark purples and reds to create my pattern.

This month I used 14ct Zweigart Rustico Aida, which perfectly suits the colours of the pattern and meant that my fob was indeed a decent fob size instead of the dinky ones I made last month. The fob is as always 2 sided but this time I made the other side a different colour...

which you can see in the photo above. I usually go for sparkly beads to finish my stitching with when I use them but this time the decision was made to use matte beads as they were more fitting to the colours used. I used both TOHO TR-11-47HF Opaque-Frosted Pine Green and TOHO TR-11-625F Matte-Color Plum Iris as I couldn't pick just the one colour.

You can see the beads with the threads in this picture made in the evening just after I'd completed the fob and biscornu. I didn't use a button for the centre of the biscornu (as usual nowadays, I prefer using beads) but I used a green seed bead on each side to cover the stitches used to pull the centres together.

As luck had it my boxes of craft thread that my fiancé supplies me with had exactly the right colour thread to match the DMC 902 used so I was able to make the cord and tassel using that.

The fun thing about tulips (and butterflies) is that they come in many colours so you can dig in your stash and see what threads you have and make your own version using them instead - using a variegated thread for the butterflies would make them both fun and even easier to stitch!

You can find the pattern here

Have a great weekend and see you Tuesday for the next instalment of the Weavers Tapestry Band Sampler SAL