Fairy Progress

I've been working exclusively on the flower fairies over the past few days. I've done quite a bit of it now, all of the smaller fairy plus all the flowers in the central part of the design, except the flower centres which are french knots. I'm now on to the left wing of the main fairy. My daughter's friend is staying over tonight and earlier spotted me stitching, and said she really likes it, which is encouraging! Although I have to say she is a very nice polite little girl who had admired every cross stitch project of mine that she's seen.


I will finish the main fairy and the other bits of the middle of the design, the tree branch and a leaf, then do all the white half stitches which make up the background, then all the flowers and leaves around the edges, then the border, then the back-stitch, and lastly the french knots. I feel french knots are more likely to get damaged by being squashed in the hoop so I'm leaving them until last.

I'll probably have to pick up the Elephants again before I finish this one as its for a birthday present and needs to be done by 30th September.

I bought a cross stitch magazine this week then afterwards wished I hadn't bothered. What attracted me was the free book that came with it - 501 tips for cross stitchers or something like that. It doesn't tell me anything I don't know already. What I really want is a proper embroidery book because I can't remember how to do stem stitch or chain stitch. I made a name badge to go on my daughter's sleeping bag a couple of weeks ago and really wanted to embroider her name in chain stitch, but ended up doing it in back stitch. The much cheaper option of course will be to get my Mum to show me how to do these stitches because I know for sure she knows!