As you may know, I'm primarily a knitter, but I do also enjoy other shapes and forms of handmaking. Since most of the Handmade-along participants are also primarily knitters, our projects are mostly knitted, but my goal for us this year has been to add a project here-and-there that utilizes other handmade technique - you know, for a little variety and fun. This month, we're doing just that!
While visiting my family in Colorado a few years ago, my cousin and I were lucky enough to sneak away for a trip to a local yarn shop - it's not often that I get to shift from yarn shop proprietor to customer - and I was just a little excited! As I was focused on yarn and fabric, my cousin found a cross stitch kit and I merely glanced at it while we were at the shop. Upon arriving at home, she opened up the kit and I was a wee bit jealous of her newly acquired treasure and I've been thinking about it ever since.
I was so inspired by her cross stitch necklace kit that we now carry them at Firefly Fibers and I hope you love them as much as I do. Say "hello" and "welcome" to Red Gate Stitchery!
MAY | RED GATE STITCHERY CROSS STITCH | through May 29th
I did a fair amount of cross stitch growing up. Then, in my twenties I created quite a collection of DMC floss, along with cross stitch patterns and several kits. To be honest, I love cross stitching, but my time is rather limited and these projects take HOURS and HOURS to complete and I always run into a brick wall with the actual finishing of my creation.
That's why I love these kits - everything is included (you may need craft glue, but that's about it), they're SUPER quick to start and finish, and they're wearable so you can show off my FO with minimal finishing effort. Yay!
I'm drawn to creative pairings and the mix of traditional cross stitch with bamboo, acrylic, and leather, is simply irresistible to me. Susan, the brilliant creative behind Red Gate Stitchery, recently added some holiday bamboo and red thread ornaments to her line up and these have me thinking about getting ahead on a few holiday gifts.
New to cross stitch? Not a problem. These projects are small and totally do-able for a first cross stitch project and Susan has a great tutorial here on her website.
I adore these little snowflake ornaments and they would be so fast to stitch up! I'm having a very hard time deciding on which kit to start with, but I think it might be one of the black teardrop kits and the leather cuff is sure to be next up.
Do you want to join the cross stitch fun this month? The Red Gate Stitchery kits are available at Firefly Fibers - both in our brick-and-mortar shop and online - or if you have your own small cross stitch project, please join and share your progress with that. I hope you'll join in and I can't wait to see what you stitch up!
Learn more about Red Gate Stitchery here and if there's anything that we're not stocking at the shop that you'd like to see added, please drop me a line at the shop and let me know!
PS - I keep promising a giveaway and the details will be coming soon and you'll have until the end of this project (5/29/16) to enter. Stay tuned...
CHEERS!
All photos by Red Gate Stitchery.