Happy Birthday Chart!

It was my dad's birthday a few weeks ago, so I decided to have a go at designing and making a cross stitch card for him. The biggest thing I've designed previously were name bookmarks, I've mostly only designed small motifs for my cross stitch jewellery.

The first step was deciding what to design. I definitely wanted the words happy Birthday on the card, so I started there. Easy!

My dad loves gardening, he's always grown vegetables and flowers, and gardening is his job so it was the obvious choice of subject! My first idea was to do some garden tools, but unfortunately putting the picture in my head down onto a cross stitch chart is a lot harder than it seems, and I underestimated the space needed. Also, designing a spade complete with mud and space for other tools is harder than it seemed, and would look a bit boring. Time to come up with another design...

After a little pondering, I decided to do a flowerpot. It may not be the most manly of designs, but it is most definitely appropriate for my dad, so after a little bit of designing with the help of my Royal School Of Needlework software and my DMC thread colour chart, I came up with a basic design. I did a little tinkering, such as adding the butterfly and changing the flower colours from red and pink to blue and purple, before coming with the finished chart design. What do you think?!

I stitched the chart using cross stitch, back stitch and lazy daisy stitch for the petals and leaves. I used seed bead detail for the flower centres, and butterfly body. After a bit of fraying to give it a pretty edge, I glued the cross stitch to a green card using clear drying craft glue, and voila! The card was finished.

My dad liked it, so It was definitely a success! What do you think?

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