Hello and Happy Sunday to all of you lovely stitchers out there!

It’s a glorious sunny day here today. The holiday is almost over and it’s time to show you what I was sewing while I was away. I didn’t intend to stitch this project initially. I had planned to sew something completely different but that didn’t work out.  Cirque des Coeurs from Ink Circles was, however, already on my “must buy” list to follow on from the other Ink circles design called Cirque des Cercles that I’ve been doing as part of a SAL with Claire.

I’m going to show you the entire completion of the project in one post and hopefully you won’t get bored. It’s a good design to split up into manageable chunks.

The thread I used is called Morning Meadows by Threadworx which I bought from Sew and So. It was recommended by Claire and comes in large skeins. This one has shades of mauve, purple and green. It’s lovely to work with too.

It isn’t easy to find Ink Circles charts in the UK but my OH found The Crafty Kitten web site at Christmas when he bought me the Cirque des Cercles chart. I have to say that Dawn from The Crafty Kitten saved me from having no project to do on holiday because she pulled out all the stops to get the chart to me in time for me going away. I rang her on a Saturday afternoon, not expecting anyone to answer the phone and I received the chart the following Monday, the day which we’d planned to travel. Amazing service! Thank you to Dawn for going the extra mile . For me to be without my needle and thread on holiday is unthinkable. I’m so pleased she could help. What a relief it was for my OH to find the parcel at the door before we left. Lucky for him, he wasn’t going to end up being dragged around every craft shop I could find, while on holiday, in my search for something to keep me quiet occupied.

I love all of the curves and secondary shapes on this design. This close up shows the lovely thread colours.

This next stage reminds me of part of the profile of an old sewing machine. Even when I’m on holiday, I dream about my mean green sewing machine . Can you see the little duck and a snail?

Another close up…

Now, the bottom right hand section is filled in. Time to scroll the frame and finish the top.

I started with the outline of the hearts. You could almost forget that the design is full of hearts until you look more closely.

Here it is, finished . I really enjoyed stitching this design. Now, I just need to put it in a frame and get it up on the wall.

I was going to save revealing this project for a while but WordPress have just informed me that Sewing Beside the Sea is one year old today. That was a surprise to me as I thought this blog was much older than that. I must be mixing it up with my other blog Oh Sew Tempting. Maybe it is something to do with me getting old too!

I hope you are enjoying crafting today .

Avis x