Ornamental heart cross-stitch picture

Ornamental heart cross-stitch

It’s been a busy year so far for baking and making but I couldn’t let my mum turn 50 without creating her something special to mark the occasion.

Gifts for my mum are the easiest things in the world – like me, she loves simple, pretty things – but it took me a while to decide exactly what to stitch for her because I wanted it to be amazing. I stumbled across this gorgeous pattern on Etsy a while ago and kept coming back to it before finally coughing up and downloading the pattern a couple of weeks ago.

I hate buying new embroidery stuff when I’ve got a bag full of bits already so I chose some light blue aida I had leftover from another project and matched the thread colours as closely as possible. I changed two of the colours completely as they were blues and I thought they would clash with the fabric too much. 

It was pretty fiddly because of all the tiny flowers and backstitching. As I’d left it until the last minute, as usual, I pretty much stitched this at every opportunity I had over a couple of weeks, including on the train – goodness knows what my fellow passengers made of that!

I decided to sacrifice some of the french knots as I simply ran out of time but I don’t think the lack of them ruins the picture at all. I made sure to do the knots that were attached to flowers but the rest I just had to leave out.

Despite it being fiddly, it’s probably my favourite cross-stitch creation and I look forward to trying some more patterns from that Etsy store – I’ll just make sure I give myself more time in future!