Snow, Easter, and a cross-stitch pattern

{making}

I just realized last week that Easter is fast approaching. As I mentioned before this April is going to be crazy busy and I am in fact hosting a baby shower the day before Easter, and I had been focusing so much on planning and making stuff for that, that I had kind of put off really getting into the Easter stuff yet.  But, we had more snow last week (one last snow? - although my husband says he saw a possibility of snow showers at least sometime next week on the forecast, but we'll see, because it's almost 80 degrees here right now, but we are in Virginia so it's possible, but I digress....). And on those snow days I found myself at a point with the shower preparations, that in order to work on anything else I needed to go to the store and get some stuff, which of course I wasn't going to do as a foot of snow fell, so I started working on stuff for Easter.
    My theme this year for Easter dinner is "burlap and lace" and I always like to do at least a few new cross-stiches every year and so I thought to myself, I should make some "lace" bunnies.  And so a good chunk of my snow day was spent charting out the pattern for these lace cross-stitch bunnies.  The one in the picture above was done on a very small scale AIDA cloth (I think maybe 22 count - I'm not exactly sure because it was a scrap, but I think it was 22) and I used two strands of floss for all the stitches. (and in that color is probably going to become part of someone's Easter present, although I am using a coral and yellow and green as accent colors to my burlap and lace....)

This next one I did on 14 count AIDA and I used two strands for all the cross stitches (and half stitches around the outline) and a single thread for all the back/straight stitches.  I really like how this turned out and I'm going to get some darker cloth and stitch it in white so that it really has a lacy look. (this one is getting used for Easter though, hence the burlap color)

And last but not least here is the pattern itself....... I've yet to figure out how to put a pdf download on here so unfortunately it's just the picture, but feel free to download the picture to work from.  Just a few stipulations if you do.  This pattern is to be used for personal use only (i.e. items you are making for yourself or as a gift, not to be sold), my only exception to that is I do allow it to be used to make items for sale as fundraisers for schools or churches.  Both the design and image are copyrighted property and may only be used in and for the manner described. (Thank you!)

It is a fairly straight-forward and simple to work design, my biggest problem with it was just keeping my place, but once you get to the main part of the body you can mostly just keep going with the rhythm of the pattern and be good.  I wouldn't suggest this for your first cross-stitch project, but it certainly doesn't take an expert.  If you have never worked with something with half stitches before there are a few around the border of this design, to work the half stitches (at least the way I have found easiest) bring your needle up through the bottom hole for the side the side of the stitch that is "cut off" in the pattern and then carefully go back down through the threads in the middle of your four holes, then stitch the other side as normal.  I always do the half side first, even if it's the opposite direction of the stitches I'm working on at that moment because it just looks nicer when it's finished.   And of course if you're going to use two threads for the x's and one for the back/straight stitches then work the x-stitches first then the straight stitches (on the one that I used two strands for all of it I did all the stitches at the same time)


I have another project for Easter that is drying as we speak so I will be posting that tommorrow :)