What could be more British than a nice Village Fete style competition.

…and for a prize? A nice rosette.

The original inspiration came from an issue of CrossStitcher magazine, but then I elaborated on it to truly embrace Britishness.

First prize…

Savoury first prize. Represented by a cucumber sandwich.

Sweet first prize. Battenberg!

Then I added a bit of colour to the design.

Next step was to stitch them onto felt using some waste canvas.

First, cut the canvas to the right size for the design. Then tack it to the fabric that you want to use, in this case felt…

Then start to stitch! The “1” for the sandwich design I did in white cross stitch, then stitched the outline in black holbein stitch (running stitch one way, then coming back the other way to form a continuous line of stitches).

Next, I stitched the filling of the sandwich in green half cross stitches.

Then did the outline of the “1” and the st in gold holbein stitch.

For the battenberg design, each quarter was stitched in pink and yellow cross stitch..

Then the outer portion in pale beige cross stitch, again highlighting the “1” and st in gold. Then… we were ready to dissolve!

With waste canvas, you wet the fabric, then can pull out the individual threads to leave just the backing fabric…

Before:

After:

Now, we have to leave them to dry. How dull. Tomorrow we finish them!