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Okay, so I know it’s only the beginning of November. But I already started my Christmas present shopping and figured I should make some cards to go with them. I like to be ahead of the game and have everything ready to go way in advance, it keeps me calm! I haven’t quite made this one into a card yet but I’ve finished stitching it and I am quite happy with how it turned out. I wanted to do a full sized nutcracker but I didn’t think it worked well with the blackwork style (whilst being compact enough to fit on a greetings card) and I recently discovered that style and wanted to try it out. You’ll probably be seeing a lot more blackwork styles from me as I think it’s a really pretty style and it’s great for when you don’t have time to do lots and lots of block stitching of colours.
The idea behind this pattern is just the traditional Christmas Nutcracker, I wanted to have the big teeth, the beard, the curly hair and an extravagant hat. For colours I choose the darkest green I have and a lovely holly red colour.
I have used DMC floss for this. The colours are 498 Red Kiss and 934 Seaweed – not the most Christmassy names I know, lol.
So here is what the finished design looks like, and this took me about 2 hours to stitch so it’s great for a quick-stitch. This is on 14-count Aida, in white. I got this Aida cheap from a bundle on an auction website so I’m sorry I don’t know what brand/colour it is (it’s white I know that!)
To be honest after finishing I wasn’t that keen on the red eyes. But I’ve kept them anyway, you might want to maybe swap out that stitch for a full block in the green colour instead. I wish I had had some metallic floss. I will probably go and get some as I really do like them in other people’s designs that I’ve seen, especially for festive designs.
Here is the pattern chart. It’s free to use for personal use but please don’t distribute it as your own and/or sell it. Thank you!
Links to colours used:
Happy Stitching!
Love, Scarlet
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