People's Choice SAL - Glitter

Hello all!

It's the first Saturday of the month so time for the People's Choice SAL run by Jo from Serendipitous Stitching. Continued thanks to Jo for hosting this unique SAL which has a different theme each month.

This month's theme is Glitter.

For me, there are three types of glitter in cross stitch - sparkly/opalescent/metallic fabric, metallic/Etoile threads, and glittery finishes. I was going to cover each one in turn, but discovered I've often used them in various combinations.

Sparkly fabric is a bit of a disheartening subject for me. My favourite fabric store is sewitall.com, and for a little bit extra they can add sparkles to the fabric. The trouble is, because these sparkles are sprayed on, the fabric looks fantastic at the beginning of a project but not so sparkly by the end, especially if the project is not stitched on a frame.

Luckily, Owls In Love was stitched on a frame so a lot of the sparkle remains (the picture doesn't really do the sparkles justice):

Whereas these three Christmas kittens were sewn in hand so, as careful as I was, by the time they'd been FFOd, most of the sparkles had rubbed off:

Opalescent or lurex fabrics, where sparkly metallic thread is woven into the weave, are a much safer option. I've stitched a number of projects on such fabric, such as Blueberry Bear on cream fabric with gold lurex:

And My Treasure on white fabric with gold lurex. I have said many times before that I am not a fan of metallic threads, so use them sparingly, but sometimes they are a wonderful evil to add a bit of sparkle:

Durene Jones' aptly seasonal Christmas cards were also stitched on white fabric with silver lurex and, to rather handily add to this month's theme, were FFOd with the addition of glittery tinsel wool and glittery fabric:

Snowflake The Cactus uses glittery tinsel wool too, along with glittery Etoile thread for the snowflakes:

But glitter isn't just for Christmas; I've also used it for Halloween, in this instance glitter felt used to frame these Spooky Hooties:

And Etoile used in the gates and moon of In The Gloaming:

And I think I'll stop there!

Next month's theme is Designer of 2023. With they way my stitching isn't happening at the moment, I'm not sure how this will pan out, but a girl can dream!

Take care,

Rachel x