You know that saying, something about you can’t pick your relatives? Well, if I could, I would pick my cousins, over and over again. They are super awesome.

Adam and his wife just had their second baby. For baby number 1, I made some bunting, embroidered and embellished with his name, date and time of birth, and weight, as a little homemade gift. Now I’m trying to work beyond my zone and improve my skills, I thought I would give a slightly bigger project a go, and luckily CrossStitcher Magazine happened to publish a beautiful springtime sampler pattern in this past months issue.

That was the one for me!

I also bit the bullet and bought some evenweave…. So a challenge in counting it would be!

First I did some of the two-tone green circular (ish) decoration, in order to help locate the other bits on the pattern later.

Then I started on each of the animals…

Can you tell what it is yet?

Hello Fawn.

Soon to be joined by…

Bunny Rabbit…

Dog…..

Ladybird…

Butterfly…

….and Mouse.

It also involved stitching some clover, a simple 13 stitch design with some outline stitching…..

It’s starting to come together!

Next, some little pink flowers….

…and some random blue splodges (note: was very tempted to leave them out… But thought I should do it properly…)

…and that’s all the main design done! Phew!

Then I drew out on some paper the name, date of birth, and weight, according to how they were to be stitched, figuring out how many stitches in width, and where they would go on the pattern….

Then I stitched…..

Done!

Now all that remains is to mount it properly in the hoop, and back it with felt…. That requires some white felt however, which alas I do not have…

It looks pretty cute though right?

updated: I mounted it… It did involve buying a glue gun, as Mr M didn’t know where his was…

Clearly MY glue gun!