OhSewCrafty Blog

• Pattern/kit by Mill Hill
• Materials: 28 count Stormy grey jobelan, DMC, & beads as kitted, Kreink #4 color 032 for border
• Size: 5″ x 7″ with border
• Time to stitch: 8 days

Presenting the penultimate builidng of my Christmas Village!  

The pattern was fine, easy to stitch with lots of lines & columns.  I did have one issue… there was a line of ecru beads under the lower tier of green bead swags.  I always tack down the bead loops to create the swag shape.  Tacking beads over beads; it just didn’t work.  So I frogged the ecru beads and stitched that area with plain ecru floss.  Then I was a able to do the bead swags and tack them down.  I love the brickwork on this piece, very classic.   The bead bows were a little challenging and I think they came out slightly wonky, but I’m not bothered, those bows would be waving in the wind, anyway.  

The materials as kitted are high quality, as usual.  There were no problems with the DMC floss and a few beads were malformed, but there were more than enough to complete the piece.  I swapped the perforated paper for my fabric, as I’m stitching 12 of these kits together on a fat half of jobelan.  

My favorite part of this pic are the little American flag and the cute blue mailbox.  Those royal blue petite beads are gorgeous!  I think it would be easy to modify the flag, if you wanted one for a different country.  I was a little worried that the post office would be too prosaic next to the fancy Palace Theatre, but it is sufficiently dolled up with beads; they go well together.  

Onto the last building, the Firehouse!  Believing it or not, that little mess of parked threads already has over 500 stitches completed.  I skipped around a lot since I had a challenge task in Stitchy Quest to stitch “yellow”.  And I was happily able to apply those 500 stitches to the Magical Stitches extra credit task to stitch something with a vehicle (the design has a fire wagon).  Finishing this BAP will be a bittersweet endeavor.  I’ve got plans to start another village type design, though, more about that later.