Monday, October 31, 2016

A Cross Stitch Halloweeny Finish, in time for Halloween!

Hey everyone, here we are on the 31st of October, the spookiest night of the year. Hope all the Halloween preparations are done, for those who celebrate it. We will be having some friends up this evening to watch some cheesy horror movies and munch on junk food. What are your plans, spooky or otherwise? Let us know in the comments below.

Well seeing as it is Halloween I have an appropriate cross stitched ornament to show off. You might remember this from my previous post here. It's a super cute freebie from Durene Jones, and I decided I would make it into a cute hanging ornament to be the first of, hopefully, many Halloween decorations.

Durene Jones Cross Stitch, Mini cross stitch finish, Halloween, cat, stitching, handmade
Durene Jones Halloween Freebie - Available here

The first step was to look through my fabrics and pick out something for the backing that would match the cross stitch. I have a selection of 4" and 5" square pieces for quilting, I bought on Ebay just for this purpose. These small pieces are perfect for cross stitched ornaments as there is a large selection of colours and patterns included for a very reasonable price. This way I don't have to store a ridiculous amount of fabric, but still have lots to choose from for small finishes. I also have the option of stitching a few together if I need a slightly larger piece for a bigger project.

A thorough search through my collection later, and I had a combination of pieces I thought would go great with my Halloween Cat. I was torn between purples and oranges but in the end orange won the day.

Durene Jones Cross Stitch, Mini cross stitch finish, Halloween, cat, stitching, handmade
Halloween Cat Ornament Preparation

The next step was to make up the back panel using the three squares I had chosen. I calculated how large I would need each piece to be, including the seam allowance, so that it would be the right size. Off I went with rotary cutter and mat, cut the three pieces and stitched them together.

Durene Jones Cross Stitch, Mini cross stitch finish, Halloween, cat, stitching, handmade
The back panel stitched from 3 pieces of fabric

All that was left was to choose a matching ribbon. I decided to go with purple rather than orange as it gave the piece a bit of contrast. Once it had all been assembled correctly it went through the sewing machine. As is typical with me I didn't leave a very large opening to turn it the right way and stuff it with the polyester filling but I managed it, with some difficulty. I closed with an invisible ladder stitch, and I now am the proud owner of my first Halloween cross stitch decoration.

Durene Jones Cross Stitch, Mini cross stitch finish, Halloween, cat, stitching, handmade
The Finished Ornament. How Cute is that?!?

I am delighted with this and it is now hanging up above the TV. If you like this cute Halloween Cat make sure you head over to Mii's blog and check out how she finished this piece off as an awesome cube, you can find it here.

Hope everyone has a great Halloween night, enjoy and stay safe.

38 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks so much for your comment. I was hoping to have a second Halloween finish done but alas it didn't work out.

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  2. Your cat finish is adorable. Great job! Have a Happy Halloween😊

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    1. Thanks so much for your comment. I hope you had a good Halloween evening, or just regular evening if you don't celebrate it :)

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  3. Thank you so much for this great tutorial. I love your finish -

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    1. Thanks so much for your comment. I thought it would be an interesting idea to go through the process for making up this piece. I'm glad you like it.

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  4. Excellent FFO! I think I'm just going to back mine, but I'll have to check out the cube finish as well. I love Durene Jones' freebies and may have to stitch all of them!

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    1. Ohhhh can't wait to see your finish. I love seeing lots of different finish styles for the same piece, it's so fun!

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  5. Forgot to say we'll be going around the neighbourhood with our little dinosaur tonight. :D

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    1. Hope the little dinosaur had a great time & got lots of candy/sweets/chocolate :D

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  6. Congrats on the super cute finish.

    Linda

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    1. Thanks so much for your comment Linda. It's still hanging up in the house. Will have to put it away for next year, hopefully it will have a friend ornament by then.

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  7. What a cute piece. Great job on it.

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    1. Thanks so much for your comment. Durene Jones does some really cute charts and I'm super happy with this finish.

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  8. Cute cat! Love the mix of backing fabric you chose too!

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    1. Thanks so much for your comment. Mixing the fabric was essential as a single 4" square piece were slightly too small to fit the back so I decided to stitch a few together.

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  9. Such a cute finish--and your Halloween plans sound perfect. Hope you had a great evening with your friends :)

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    1. Thanks so much for your comment. We had a great evening, watched a terrible horror movie and made fun of it.

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  10. Replies
    1. Thanks so much for your comment. Hope you had a great Halloween, if you celebrate it.

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  11. A great Halloween ornament finish! Thanks again for the link to my blog and the link to that adorable design.

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    1. Thanks so much for your comment Mii. I had to link to your cube as it is sooo cute, wanted to make sure no one missed it :)

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  12. Oh what a cute ornament! I spent a quiet Halloween with my boyfriend, we watched a horror movie (which gave me trouble sleeping...) and ate a lot of sweets (we bought far to many of them for the kids... going for trick or treat is still not that popular in Germany...) and I stitched :D

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    1. Thanks so much for your comment. Which horror movie did you watch? that's the great thing about watching bad horror movies, they are so silly you can't get nightmares. We also bought way too many sweets for he trick or treaters.

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  13. Replies
    1. thanks so much for your comment. I'm really happy I went for the purple ribbon instead of the orange, I think it works really well.

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  14. So cute! Great job stitching it - and I love your idea of buying quilt squares to finish off ornaments :D

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    1. Thanks so much for your comment. The quilting squares are really handy. They are fairly reasonable and you get lots of different patterns and styles. Buying fat quarters can be really expensive to get a good selection.

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  15. The kitty is adorable and you made it into a perfect Halloween decoration!

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    1. Thanks so much for your comment. I'm delighted with how it turned out, however people already think I'm a crazy cat lady, don't think this ornament has help change that idea :D

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  16. Wow that looks so cool! Great job on your first go, it certainly doesn't look like a first try. Great colour choices for the fabric and ribbon too. Great idea to keep those little pieces on hand. I hope you had a great Halloween night, it sounds like a perfect night to me.
    xo Alicia

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    1. Thanks so much for your comment. I had a good laugh on Halloween. We have a few very good friends and any time we hang out together we watch terrible movies.

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  17. Replies
    1. Thanks so much for your comment. I'm a big fan of Durene Jones. I have so many more of her charts I want to stitch.

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  18. I know Halloween is long passed but I couldn't miss commenting on this cutie! I love how you finished it with the three matching pieces of fabric and the purple ribbon adds a little contrast as you say. Beautiful!

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    1. Thanks so much for taking the time to comment on this. It spent a good amount of time hanging in our house, way past Halloween, just because I think it's so cute!

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  19. Replies
    1. Thanks so much for your comment. This has been put away now to make space for the Christmas Decorations.

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Would love to read any comments you would like to leave. Thanks for brightening my day :)