The cats meow, Christmas Project #1

I was feeling a bit ill this weekend so I spent some time working on my first Christmas gift project. I still haven't decided what pattern for my mother-in-law so I worked on the gift for my sister-in-law. She mentioned that she wants to start decorating her house a bit so I made her some cute tea towels/kitchen towels. I used two store-bought flour sack towels and a pattern from Sublime Stiching. I printed out the patterns and use some blue dressmakers chalk to trace the pattern onto the fabric. I used a split stitch for the bows and the stars and a stem stitch for pretty much everything else. I was taught to split my floss in half, so thats what I always do. This should leave you with three strands of thread when you are stitching. If you want a thicker line you could always skip the splitting step.

Sublime Stitching has some great how-to diagrams for those who don't feel comfortable with embroider or cross-stitch. Here's their picture of the split stich:

For the split stich you stitch a short line then you come up through the centre of the line to make your next stitch.


and their stem stitch:


For the stem stitch you just make a short stitch/line then come up close beside it and make another stitch.



My sister-in-law loves cats so I hope she likes them. If not, she can use them to dry her dishes.