It's getting to be one of my favorite seasons of the year, the Fall, and I'm happily cross-stitching more shadowbox pictures to decorate one of my fireplace mantles. If you're a reader of my Linda's Blog you know I'm drawn to the beautiful bright colors of the Fall. When I saw the Mill Fill "Autumn Basket" cross-stitch kit I knew I would buy it.
The Autumn Basket #MH14-3203 pattern uses full cross-stitch as well as beads of various sizes for emphasis and depth. The Mill Hill patterns usually call for certain areas of the perforated paper to be left untouched like the background or border for emphasis and depth as well.
In embroidering the cross-stitch I decided to once again utilize the rectangular wood frame jig that my darling husband built for me that I could tape the edges of my perforated paper to. The wood frame jig is a rectangular embroidery hoop of sorts, but without bending the perforated paper. He had made it out of 1/2" x 1" pine wood strips with an adjustable center strip that I used for this square design.
I had learned from previous mistakes that I needed to draw diagonal lines to locate the exact center of the perforated paper as in previous perforated paper cross-stitch picture I have done the picture was slightly off center by a few holes which caused a problem with inserting the needles in the holes along one of the edges of my frame. So, I lightly drew a diagonal line across each corner with a pencil to get the center point of the perforated paper.
If you look at the suggested picture below and my finished picture above you'll notice that I have one extra line under the basket in my finished picture. I decided to stitch around the border before stitching the basket and flowers. As I was stitching the rust colored section of the square border and was coming around to meet the left hand side I discovered I had accidentally added an extra stitch to the right hand side of the border. My sides weren't matching. I had an extra stitch - YIKES! There was no way I was going to rip out all the stitching I had done so I opted instead to add a line at the bottom of the basket. As it turns out the extra line actually makes the basket stand out a little better. At least I think so. Phew!
A lot of the cross-stitch 5.25" by 5.25" pictures I have made were finished in small 6 1/2" by 6 1/2" shadowbox frames with 5" by 5" openings that I had gotten at Michaels when they went on sale one year. I used up all the shadowbox frames I had gotten that year and have been looking for them ever since and haven't found them again.
