My Mother's Day Stitching

For Mother's Day I took advantage of the complimentary card patterns that were in some of the cross stitch magazines I've purchased recently and did some stitching for all the moms in my life.

This Fizzy Moon bear comes from Issue 187 of The World of Cross Stitching and I stitched it for my own mom. I love the beautiful spring flowers and the brightness of the card frame. I have to laugh at the pattern instructions though. They confidently assured me I'd have this design finished in "Approx. 6 hours." I didn't keep exact track of time, but I'd say my six hours turned into about 20 hours!

I've never used these freebie patterns before and I think the hardest part was holding on to the tiny piece of aida cloth while trying to stitch it. I'm used to stitching with a loom, but the fabric pieces supplied with the patterns were too small to fit any of my looms.

This second design I made for the boyfriend's mom. It's a Margaret Sherry mouse courtesy of Cross Stitch Crazy Issue 163. So cute! I may have to restitch this one for my own collection someday. With a slightly larger piece of fabric and a few less stitches to work, I think it's fair to say this one actually did take only about 6-8 hours to stitch.

Last, but not least, something for my Grandma. She's an avid owl collector; pictures, plates, figurines. She likes just about anything with owls on it. I didn't have any good owl patterns on hand so I took to the internet to see what was out there. I found this owl, which blogger Tory posted about after having found it at a flea market. I used the picture as a guide and reworked the design in colours that I had on hand. I did a little more research and found out this owl is pretty popular, Another blogger, Cynthia, uses this pattern when she's teaching young girls and children how to cross stitch. So I'm guessing this little guy has served as a first stitching project for a lot of cross stitchers!