Happy Birthday to My Dear Mother!!!

Today is my mother's 80-th birthday anniversary!
And today's post is devoted to my mother and her cross stitch. I hope it is interesting for you to see what kind of designs stitchers stitched many years ago, what materials and flosses they used.
As long as I remember my mother her hands have never been idle: all the time she was doing something: either sewing, knitting, crocheting, cross stitching or embroidering. When my mother was much younger, she did a lot of cross stitching and embroidery, and her pretty works created a special, very warm atmosphere in our home. Mother decorated our home with her pretty doilies, table cloths, curtains, pillows, oh, and lots of other pretty things . But I think most of all she enjoyed stitching pictures, I mean big pictures! Two of her cross stitched pictures are now hanging in our home.
This one is called "The Castle", it's my favorite. It was stitched three over three on the fabric which is usually used for bedding . If you look at the picture closely you will see how many blended colors were used here. At the time when my mother cross stitched, stitchers widely used two or three different colors for blending.

The other picture is called "Alyenushka", its pattern is based on the picture by a Russian painter V. Vasnetsov. I think the picture was stitched before I was born. Now stitchers "age" their fabric, this picture has aged in a natural way.

Here is one more picture which is older than me. At first mother made it into a newspaper holder, it was kind of a pocket hanging on the wall into which you could put a newspaper. When my son was born, mother made it into a lovely pillow for him. When I brought this piece here I made it into a pillow again. It is like a third life for this piece.

One more piece, the oldest one, it dates back to 1940-s . It is a table cloth which is already falling apart . But I love the pattern so much that I want to make a chart and reproduce this table cloth.

I hope you enjoyed seing my mothers' works.

С Днем Рождения, Мамочка!!!

Мы тебя любим!

St Valentine's Stitching

I hope everyone is having a wonderful St. Valentine's Day.

Today I will not write too much, I will just show you pictures of my new St. Valentine designs.

I made a sewing set called "Hearts" which includes: a pincusion, a triangle scissors case, a scissors fob, a scissors stand and last but not least a biscornu.

If you are interested in buying any of my designs, contact me, please. My address is in my Profile. Thank you.

And I'd like to show you some more pictures of my daffodils. I have a variety of them in colors, sized and forms and love them all!

Some more little flowers in St. Valentine's colors:

* * * * * *

In my previous post I showed a doll from my doll collection. My friend Passione vera, who is also interested in dolls, has a nice collection of lovely dolls, you can go and have a look at them here: http://passionevera.blogspot.com/2009/02/amici-per-sempre.html . Today one more doll, Irene or Irishka (Иришка) in Russian, is sending her hello and love to her little friends in Italy.

Unfortunately, I do not know anything about this doll. But I love her even if she does not have any papers, she is pretty , isn't she?
* * * * * *
I also want to thank Yana from http://lovekrestik.blogspot.com/ for giving me an award. I am so sorry that I can't pass it to 5 bloggers because I love much more blogs - look at my list of favorite blogs! It would be too stressful to choose only 5 of them, so I am passing it to everyone!

* * * * * * *

I want to thank all my friends who left comments on my work, sent e-mails to me. Thank you very much for your kind words and precious advice. I really appreciate this!

I also want to say that in a few days my mother is having her 80-year anniversary, so the next post will be devoted to her. Stay tuned!

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone!