There’s this card at work – quite a pretty card, I think, with a hummingbird and flowers on a silver background. It’s reused in various captions for women at different points of the year, as well as being a blank card. You may know the card; it’s also a picture that turns up on the big window-posters we have.

Anyway, it was used as a Mothering Sunday card, and in the long hours I spend standing at the tills, I wondered what it would be like to turn it into a cross-stitch pattern, and to have it hanging on my wall. Or on a cushion, or whatever I decided to do with the finished piece. So I had a go a sketching the picture and transferring it to graph paper. I thought I’d start simple, with just the hummingbird, and work out from there.

That and I only tested it on a 4″x4″ piece of aida, hoping that it would be the right size for the bird. Fortunately, I managed to guess right. I know, I know: I could look up how to accurately determine the size of cloth required, but – effort! And I was only doing the first test-stitch.

I’m now working on adding flowers to the pattern, and then I’ll see about the right size cloth. I’m considering trying it on hessian.

Also, this exercise is giving me a whole new appreciation of designers.