A couple of Christmases ago, I began stitching Satsuma Street's colourful Deck The Halls cross stitch wall hanging, and a few weeks ago, I finally finished it!
I'm so pleased to finally have it completed after all this time, and I'm really happy with the end result- especially as I had to make a couple of colour changes, and struggled to figure out what to do with it near the end.
It should have been a fairly quick project, and I was close to completing it last Christmas, but I stopped and started it, couldn't decide which colour thread to use for the snowflakes, and took ten months to make it down to Hobbycraft to choose. So something that could've taken me a month to stitch, ended up taking two years.
I was drawn to the Deck the Halls pattern because of how unique and colourful it was. It's so different to all the other Christmas designs you see at this time of year, and while it has a Scandinavian feel, it's nothing like the typical red and white patterns that are everywhere at Christmas time. (Which I'm sooo bored of these days). It's bright, colourful, and cheerful, and I love that about it.
It's made up of five main sections, including a star, reindeer, Christmas tree, dove, and bell as the centrepieces, with smaller flowers, snowflakes, and arrows making up the rest of the design in lots of reds, greens, yellows, and pinks. It's been designed so that you can stitch it as one long wall-hanging picture, or as five separate pieces, which is really clever. I obviously chose to make it as one picture, but I think it would look just as beautiful broken up in to five. If you're new to cross stitching, you'll probably find it less intimidating that way, but it's an easy project with no complicated stitches or patterns, and anybody should be able to make it once they've mastered the basics.
The pattern comes as a full-colour downloadable PDF, with an easy-to-follow chart, and a list of recommended materials to help you get started. Satsuma Street suggest using a natural-coloured Evenweave, but that didn't appeal to me aesthetically, and I chose to make it on 16-count white aida to make the colours pop, and so that the end result would be a little larger. I'm so glad I did, as I personally think the colourful threads look so much better against the white background.
The only issue with using white aida is that there are white threads in the pattern, which obviously blend in to the fabric. I tried lots of different colours in place of white- cream, lemon, lilac, blue, silver, and more- but I didn't like any of them, and became chronically uninspired. I ended up putting the cross stitch aside last Christmas for ten months, until I finally made it down to Hobbycraft in October to shop for some new threads to try. In the end, after trying more colours, I went back to white for the lines through the arrows, and blended a strand of white and a strand of turquoise for the snowflakes. I'm not 100% happy with the colour choice for the snowflakes, but it's the best I could do, and I like to think it works with the other colours in the picture. Either way, I refuse to change them again. I actually got the picture framed last weekend, so there's no going back now!
Despite the colour-matching issues at the end, overall it was so much fun to sew, and has to be one of my favourite makes ever. The colourful projects are always the most fun to stitch. If you're looking for a modern, colourful cross stitch picture to make this Christmas, I couldn't recommend it to you more.
I now want to try more of Satsuma Street's patterns, and have bought their set of Christmas baubles patterns, which I'm going to begin as soon as I get a spare second. I don't expect to get very far this Christmas, as there's always a million other things to do, but I'm sure I'll keep you updated on my progress on Instagram.
Have you cross stitched or crafted anything so far this Christmas?
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