Funky Town

I’m going to put it out there – I am sick of looking for cross-stitch patterns and only finding ones that are of horses or kittens. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against either species but I don’t necessarily want to be cross-stitching them in variants of brown of an evening. Which is why I was thrilled when, during one of my Pinterest-fests before Christmas, I stumbled upon Satsuma Street designs.

The patterns are all available on Etsy and are really reasonable prices considering the quality and clarity of the instructions. My favourites were definitely the colourful take on different cities or countries of the world. They are available for instant download and even the deals where you email the ones you want were received very quickly. I went a bit mad and bought quite a few which left me with the massive dilemma of which to try first!

In the end, I thought Paris was cheerful and went about gathering up my threads and material and curling up in front of the fire to begin. Even putting the threads onto the ring holder I use for them made me smile – not a dull colour in sight!

Although I did make a mistake from the outset and used too small a hoop, which has meant that I’ve had to reposition my material a few times. It will definitely need ironing before doing anything with the finished product.

The pattern is very straightforward to read as both colours and symbols are used. There’s also a handy small version of the pattern on one page, with an enlarged version on the following pages. I found I only used the bigger one if I had trouble making out a symbol at first but stuck with the smaller one for the most part. There are also handy instructions in terms of the size and the frame size used in the finished product picture (which I should have paid more attention to at the start).

I started Paris just before Christmas and just finished it now. To be honest, I probably could have done it quicker but didn’t have as much time over the Christmas break and after than I thought I would. I’d say in terms of difficulty, I’d put this at a medium because of the size and time it takes but it is definitely one of the most enjoyable patterns I’ve used. My new dilemma is which one of the patterns I bought to do next…….