When it's Spring again, I'll bring again...

Stitching from East Anglia!

We finally have some nice weather and I've been stitching some lovely Spring themed pieces, most of which I can't show you yet because they are giveaway prizes.

I can show you this one though:

This is a Lizzie*Kate design called Spring.  I received it in a giveaway from Sarah Crafty Moo.  I changed alot of the colours as the original is very dark for a Spring design.  I used the same threads as the San Man Easter design I recently stitched because they are on the same fabric and will be scrap booked together.

The little bunny charm comes from Ang's Attic, a great online store based only a few miles from where I live.  You can get a small bag of 6-10 charms for only £1 and there are loads of different designs.  They mainly sell beads for jewellery making and have a good FB page for their beading fans.  They also have a forum on the website for those of you that don't FB.

The piece is stitched over 1 on 28 count which I really enjoy.  I was not looking forward to all the green in the hill so guess what I did?  Have a closer look at this photo:

Yes, I coloured it in using a fabric pen!  I stitched the house first then had the idea.  I counted the number of threads needed for the hill and marked it on the fabric then just coloured it in.  Then I stitched the path, carrots and flowers on top.  Saved me hours of boring stitching.

The other piece I can show you is the fourth in the Dragon Dreams 12 Dragonlets of Christmas:

This one shows Four Calling Collie Birds.  A collie bird is the traditional name for a blackbird but over the years the word has changed to "calling".  Dragon Dreams have gone for both meanings ancient and modern; four blackbirds calling on the telephone!  The picture reminds me of the telephone cable leading to our house which always has a few pigeons and collared doves sitting on it.  Pre-fibre optic day our internet connection varied according to if there was a bird there or not!  That's how fragile it was.  Now we can actually stream Youtube much to the Small Boy's delight.  For those of you with young children I recommend Barefoot Books' video clips.  I also recommend the actual books themselves, alot of them feature soft sculpture and collage pictures, beautiful to look at and lovely to read aloud.

I'm so pleased that I'm keeping up with this SAL, one a month.  Here are all four dragons together:

Finally, via FB this week I discovered a fellow cross-stitch scrap-booker -  Inside Number Twenty.  Monique has been scrap booking much longer than me and has some lovely pages.  Very inspiring.