Hubby and I recently celebrated our 4th anniversary. As most of you know, we handmade a lot of the things that featured in our wedding - and one of my favourites was this Wedding Day Cross Stitch Sampler. I also used the same kit to create table numbers! (well letters, actually.) I had never cross-stitched anything in my life before making this so I admit it was a bit of a plunge into the deep end, but when I saw this beautiful kit from socreastitch I just had to make it. Cross stitch is a lot easier than you might think, and many kits are colour coded. That said, this one wasn't but if I can get the hang of it, anyone can. It was such a pleasure to make - and I still remember evenings spent stitch in front of the fire stitching while hubby designed invites. We had the sampler on display on the actual day and it now hangs in our bedroom as a reminder of our beautiful day. 

This cross stitch kit, which is called "Blossom Heart Wedding Record" is designed by Le Lin d'Isabelle and comes with everything you will need for this project; the linen fabric, the threads, the needle ... and it comes with a complete alphabet for you to personalise your work. All you need is an embroidery hoop to hold your work. 

On display on our wedding day - Photograph by Binky Nixon

After I made our wedding sampler I used the letter patterns to make table letters too - I made 10 in total. Once I had cross stitched the letters I simply improvised and added little flowers and leaves on each one. Then when the wedding day was over I gave them to some of our special helpers who shared the same initial as a keepsake, and hubby (Andy) and I kept the A & J.

When finished I cut them into a circle and popped them into an embroidery hoop and kept the edging rough and rustic ... and as I didn't want the stitching to show on the back, I simply added a layer of lace (which I cut a bit bigger than the other circle so it showed around the edge), before clipping them both into the hoop.

When making the wedding sampler, the date was initially in italics but I didn't like the way it was working out so I improvised, and played around with it and eventually ended up with this ... it's not perfect but that's ok, it doesn't always have to be ... I was happy with it for my first attempt.

My favourite thing about the pattern is the heart ... it's just so pretty and you could personalise it for anything really, it doesn't just have to be for a wedding does it? anniversary, a milestone birthday, or simply with initials!

 TIP: When you've finished your sampler leave a good amount of fabric around the edges. Unfortunately I didn't, which made it difficult when I framed it because I had to tape the edges down and I couldn't get it as taut as I would have liked. Below is the back of another cross stitch project - this is very easy to do, just thread a long bit of thread, start in the middle and just sew back and forth, back and fort etc until you've sewed two sides together nice and tight, then sew the other two sides together. Had I left enough fabric on my wedding sampler I would have done this to ensure a nice tight finish - but live and learn! 

JM x