Fair and Square Christmas Round with Claire G.

My partner for the Christmas 2008 Round of the Fair and Square exchange was Claire, and she sent me the CUTEST little snowman that's going to become an ornament for our tree. Just look at how adorable he is!
Claire also included a beautiful Christmas card she crafted herself. It's quite stunning in person, and it's officially the first Christmas card I received this year.

Now, let me show you what I stitched up for Claire. In our initial emails, she mentioned her tradition of making gingerbread houses, which gave me a few ideas. But her faith and her church were very important to her, and I thought that would be something meaningful on which to focus. Claire said they they have a severe lack of homemade ornaments for their tree, so I wanted to make sure whatever I stitched could be turned into an ornament.

I chose to stitch Winter Church by Primavera Designs (a freebie you can find here). I thought it tied in nicely with Claire's preferences, and it also reminded me of going to church on Christmas eve for Midnight Mass. (Even though DH and I aren't particularly religious, I still find Christmas Eve services to be a gratifying experience)

I did french knots for the snow instead of the stitches, and used a silver metallic thread for the Christmas star. It is indeed a full star. (I perhaps did not photograph it as well as I could have. But trust me, it's all there.) And you can't really tell from the picture, but I had a little irridescent blending thread in with the white for the french knots.

I made a few other color changes as well, but I figured why not, since the piece is charted for Anchor Tapestry Wool Colors. Did you know there's just no good conversion to DMC from Anchor Tapestry Wool? So basically, I looked at the picture and came up with my own conversions, and I think it turned out quite nice. Even without the border, which I removed to fit within the F&S requirements. (The border would have made it far too big anyway.)

For my signature square (in which I have cleverly blocked out my full last name for privacy), I used a candle piece from my PC Stitch program.