I Has A Boat!

A couple of my friends have left their flat and moved into a canal boat. I went back to visit my parents recently and ended up sorting through loads of my old cross stitching magazines, where I found this beautiful canal boat design. It was just screaming at me to make it for my friends. As one of their birthdays was just before Christmas, I embarked on this rather time consuming project. I started it in May just after I finished University. At that point I hadn't really done any cross stitching at all for three years, so was quite an ambitious project to get back into the swing of things again. It took from May until the start of December to complete, with many stops and starts in between. it was quite challenging at times especially as I have real difficulty seeing differences in red shades, so it all just looked one colour to me! I changed the original design slightly by altering the colour of the boat in the pattern from red to blue, so it would look more like my friends boat, and also changed the person driving the boat to be more like my friend. It really was brilliant watching this colourful design come slowly to life, and I was thrilled by the end result after lots of hard work!! I managed to find a nice frame for it, and went to frame it a couple of days before her birthday and realised that I had no iron with which to straighten out the fabric. So after a quick dash out to find an iron, it was framed and wrapped. She absolutely loved it, and I'm told it takes pride of place in the living room of the boat and makes her smile daily :) I love how you can put a smile on people face with things you make!






Vicki x