An alternate and some present preparations

I don't think I am going to get a chance to get my embroidery hoops before christmas, so I think my christmas embroideries (number 4 on my Winter Stitching List) will instead be a series of sketchy drawings- inspired from around the interwebs on the corner of a series of placemats.

Starting with a strip of christmas patchwork for the height of the mat, each embroidery will sit in a window in the lower right corner of each.

I have been working on them here and there for about a week now and I am slowly getting there- these may be practice stitches or they may be the final thing, I am undecided yet. Most likely I will redo the reindeer as I'm not keen on the thread I used; I much prefer the chunky DMC and especially the Perle.

I hand drew these guys, based on a design by Kerri, they were my favourite to start with and I ran ahead with them before I had the thread I had ordered online, now I really wish I had waited and will probably be redoing these!

Father Christmas used my hand quilting thread so the red stands proud from the cotton, you can also see my little collection of french knots on the right; about half of them are single stitches because it took me ages to figure out what I was doing wrong!

The snowman;

I had also seen these carol singers on pinterest, they are another design from Sew Deerly Loved that I fell in love with, these are the first embroidery I have done that solely uses the correct thread :) So far I am pretty happy with how these guys are turning out.

Trying to make the most of my brown thread I decided I needed a little Christmassy robin to complete the set. 

 I can't wait to get these all finished- but I still need a sixth design, maybe a forest of Pine trees, like the ones in Rainbow Stitches? Any ideas?

Also, although I havent got it started yet, I have got all my bits and pieces ready to make some family photograph coasters for my Mum's christmas present. Hope to get started on these this week too!

J x