Alert The Media

Don't have a heart attack but I actually finished a few cross stitch designs this weekend.

This is the hedgehog that's going to become an ornament as soon as I iron him & his little pal, find some fabric to add to the back and sew the pieces together.

And, this is the other hedgehog that will eventually become an ornament for my mom. When I told her I was stitching up some hedgehogs. she said she didn't like them because they reminded of her rats but then she claimed this one when I showed it to her. And, once she decided she wanted it, I didn't feel the need to stitch the entire design. (I still have to do the back stitching along the left edge.)

And, this is the hippo who will someday be a needlecase. That was my original plan for this hippo and I have an idea in my head how I'm going to do that but you never know what will happen once I start cutting fabric. I especially wanted to take a picture of this one in case there's a mishap during the needlecase making process.

Both charts are freebies from Olka's blog and you can find them here. She offers two different charts of each design and I did both versions of the hedgehog using her suggested floss colors. For the hippo, I didn't cross stitch the entire chart -- I just wanted the hippo part. I chose my own DMC colors (I wish now that I'd gone with a darker pink) and filled in the background because there seemed to be a lot of plain fabric surrounding the hippo.

All three are stitched on the same piece of 18 ct aida that was so blindingly white that I dunked it in a bowl of tea for a couple of minutes just to see what would happen. That left me with a slightly off-white aida with a few random tea splotches. Next time, I'll pay more attention to my "tea-dyeing."

I hope to totally finish these this week. On Wednesday, I'll post some more vintage patterns.