Goodbye January, and hello February! It would be a shame to wish away the shortest month, as these next four weeks are valuable stitching time so let’s be positive, and embrace February. We can do it, if we all really try!
Cold winter evenings? Stuck inside over the weekend? What a great chance to finish off a tapestry, or maybe start a new one, and make the most of these days before the garden really needs you.
Today we’ll talk about some of the tapestry kits that we have in our range to to be stitched to celebrate the arrival of a new baby, or to give as a handmade christening gift, or to stitch as a birthday present for an older child. Not all of our kits are cushion sized so we’ll cover small tapestries as well as the larger ones. If you’re thinking of starting your first tapestry, or stitching your first one with a name panel, we hope we’ll answer most of your questions.
An ideal starting place if you’d like to stitch something not-too-ambitious (or big!) are the A-Z Animal tapestries, which you’ll find here on our website, along with our other designs for births and christenings.
The A-Z Animals designs each measure approximately 7.5″ x 7.5″, and come with a 12 holes per inch printed canvas, a generous supply of Anchor tapestry wool, a reference chart and alphabet and numbers for working out your name panel. They also have a lovely red bag to keep your wool and charts in while you stitch.
With the A-Z Animals, you can choose the use the large alphabet provided and stitch a single name as we did (above), stitching ‘Ben’ on B for Birds. Baxter’s cushion, below has his name and date of birth stitched side by side.
We include space on the alphabet chart for you to plan your panel – with enough room to try it again if you aren’t happy the first time!
A for Ark is a wonderful little tapestry for a child with an Ark-themed nursery. The alphabet border will provide extra interest in years to come when your youngster starts to read and recognise the letters of the alphabet.
Arthur’s A for Ark has his name and date of birth stitched in different colours, with hearts to balance it out – a lovely touch!
One of the best things about the A-Z Animals is that they can be stitched for both boys and girls, as demonstrated by Max and Mhairi’s M for Monkey tapestries. The border in Max’s has been personalised to include his initials, numbers and some moons. There’s a lot of fun to be had with these little gems!
Once your tapestry is completed, you have the option to make it into the centre of a larger cushion or perhaps a book bag, or take it to be framed by your local picture framer. We can help with the cushion and bag making side of things, more details here.
If you’d like to stitch something a little larger than the A-Z Animals, but possibly not as large as a cushion, we have a timeless tapestry trio for you – Dinosaur, Farmyard and Noah Samplers.
These designs are 10″ x 8″, and as with the A-Z Animals they are printed in colour on 12hpi canvas.
When these three sampler cushions are sent to us for our Making Up Service, we tend to sew wider side borders than we do top and bottom, to ‘square up’ the designs a little. More of that here on an earlier blog post.
Farmyard Sampler kit contents, with everything you need to get started:
Larger tapestries include Alphabet Ark, Alphabet Cats and Dogs, Daisy Sampler, Seaside and Alphabet Owls. Pictures of all of these can be seen on our website as well as on our Facebook page where we have many albums showing cushions that we have made for customers.
Eva’s Alphabet Owls, above, made into a cushion and Sebastian’s Alphabet Owls, below, framed as a picture. What a tranquil scene for the walls or a quiet corner of any nursery.
Most of our larger tapestries are stitched on 10 holes per inch canvas.
To see our full range of tapestry kits to stitch for babies and young children, click here. We’ve also put together pictures of some of the birth tapestries that have left our workshop recently. There are many more in our Facebook Albums, and on our Pinterest boards.
Over to you! Whether you decide to stitch an A-Z Animal tapestry, one of the medium samplers, or a larger cushion or picture, your handmade gift will bring years of enjoyment – starting with your very first stitch!
