I’ll admit it: For the past few years I have been quite a humbug when it comes to Christmas. However, this year all that has changed. I guess my niece’s excitement over Christmas must be contagious or something, because this year I have felt like stitching for Christmas. Not too much as I don’t want to over-commit myself, but I figured along with the baby ornament, a Christmas-themed exchange would be just about the right amount of Christmas stitching to adequately celebrate my rediscovered Christmas spirit.
So, instead of a traditional ornament exchange, over at the Robin’s Nest I decided to offer a stocking stuffer exchange. The idea behind a stocking stuffer exchange as opposed to an ornament exchange came about because I know that there are already a lot of ornament exchanges going on this time of year and I thought it would be fun to do a Christmas/winter-themed exchange that wouldn’t be limited specifically to making an “ornament.”
Our post date for the Stocking Stuffer Exchange was December 1 and since my partner has already received what I stitched for her I can finally share it. I stitched “Winter’s Eve” on 28 count light mocha Quaker cloth from the 2006 JCS Ornament edition by Country Cottage Needleworks for Leslie and turned it into a pinkeep.
When I saw “Winter’s Eve” in the magazine I immediately thought it would lend itself nicely to a pinkeep and though I had never done one before I knew that is the finishing method I wanted to try. Of course I hem-hawed around and didn’t do my finishing immediately and by the time I sat down to do the finishing I briefly considered taking the easy way out and making a little pillow instead, but in the end I decided to take the challenge and make my first pinkeep.
And believe it or not, it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it might be! Originally I was going to use the instructions for a pinkeep that I found in JCS, but I came to the conclusion that I wanted to do it differently so I made up my own instructions and have to say I am quite pleased with the results.
In order to photograph it I sat it on a plate stand on Mom’s mantle and when she saw the finished result she requested one for herself. Hmm… maybe I will be doing more Christmas stitching this year after all!