Monthly challenge and stash shopping

Yesterday was reveal day for the Monthly Challenge at Jaynes Attic. This months design was from Windy Willows. I stitched mine on Zweigarts opalescent lugana, using Anchor 1033, 1034 & 1035. As usual there are some wonderful finishes in the album . I finished mine a Christmas card hanger, here's how I did it:-

I cut two ovals of cardboard and gathered and laced the stitched piece over one of them, and a piece of print cotton over the other, lined them up together back to back and stitched around the edges catching the evenweave to the cotton. So far so much like a pinkeep except that at the centre top I caught in a small loop of ribbon for hanging, and at the bottom edge I sandwiched the top edge of a 1m length of sequin waste between the two cardboard pieces. It is quite easy to pierce the sequin waste with a sharp needle so I just stitched right through it as I stitched the front and back together. Finally I trimmed the edge with a length of braid, fastening it onto the front section rather than around the outside edge as you would for a pinkeep. The cards are hung onto the sequin waste with tiny clothes pegs (the sorth they sell for card making).

Oh, and I mentioned stash shopping. My friend and I went to Exeter yesterday for the Stitching and Creative Crafts show. Not a huge amount of Cross Stitch there, but lots of beading. I got some beads, a highly discounted DMC kit (I didn't really want the kit, but it was so cheap it was worth buying it for the nice piece of eau de nil linen that came with it), a pretty pair of Premax scissors with flower patterned handles, and a kit to make a Machine embroidered piece from organza, where you use a soldering iron to melt away parts of the design, which sounds like a lot of fun.

I got some drop dead gorgeous beaded shoes too. Because they were there...