Throughout December, Deloise provided Stacia and me with an Advent calendar full of many surprises. I was a few days in before I realized the end result would be a cross stitch project. I had something else on the go (12 Days of Christmas) so it was almost the new year before I got started.

The centre of the project went quite quickly but I struggled with both the top and bottom borders. It looks easy enough but ending and starting those brown lines in the right spot was a challenge.

Along the way, in our weekly chats, Deloise provided some very useful tips to go along with all the tools she sent.

At a later date, on one of our sewing days, Deloise is going to give us a tutorial on how to frame the piece.

Mum did most of the work on this one but I took it on to finish. I didn’t keep track of how much I did but I worked on it over the Christmas holidays for at least a couple of years. This was the year I wanted it finished and it was done just a bit before the end of the year.

I’ll get it framed so I can hang it next year.

Depending on the size these could either be called cards or tags; I use them interchangeably. If I counted correctly there were 31 in this year’s batch.

I’ve usually start working on them in October and I’ve already collected a number of patterns for next year.

If your particular piece is missing it’s because I wrapped some parcels before I remembered to take a photo. There were also some duplicates and I didn’t take more than one photo.