Friday, September 28, 2018

Autumn House Freebie

Hi, stitching friends!

Heavens to Betsy, it seems like I have been working on this forever! I mentioned in May that I was working on a series of seasonal houses to release as freebies.

A few hours ago, I finished my autumn house stitch into a beanbag--technically, a rice bag! I've been wanting to try using crushed walnut shells as pillow filler, but I saw a YouTube video by McKenna of Stitching in Sequins where she used rice. Since I had a brand-new bag of plain old white rice in my pantry, I thought, Heck, yeah! And it worked like a charm. It has a nice weight to it, and I did not have to stress about getting fiberfill stuffed tightly into the corners and seams. Yay! I did not add a hanger since this will sit in a tray with my other autumn stitches.

Can you believe I found that lace in a secondhand store in my hometown this summer? Three to four yards for twenty-five cents! The volunteer who rang up my purchase said, "How did I miss seeing this? Oh, this is lovely." I gave her as much as she wanted and still had plenty left over for lots of projects of my own.
I'll show you a few more photos of the finished pattern. You can use any neutral color linen. If you don't have the over-dyed threads I've called for, substitute anything you have and it will be beautiful. I do recommend using "Autumn Leaves" by The Gentle Art, rather than substituting for that color, though, because the variegation of the yellow, green and orange is perfect for the leaves and leaf piles.
The pumpkin vines spell out "Love." This is my love note to my favorite season.

The finished size of the design, if stitched over two on 32-count linen or evenweave, is 3-3/8" x 2-3/4", so it's a perfect project to use up a small scrap of linen you can't bear to waste.
I hope you enjoy stitching this as much as I enjoyed designing it. I used the artwork of Charles Wysocki as a jumping-off point for my sketch, but as I sketched and stitched the final piece, I made it my own.

You can download a PDF of the pattern here.

Happy fall!