Not long ago, I was struck by unexpected inspiration: I needed to make a cross stitch piece featuring house hippos.
If you're a Canadian of a certain age, house hippos are a cultural touchstone; if you're not, you might be a little confused. House hippos were born in 1999:
En francais:
Cute, right? The lesson may not have stuck, but house hippos sure did. Without a house hippo pattern available (at least, not one I could find), I came up with my vision. Then I went looking for patterns to put together.
I didn't really record the details (sorry). I got a hoop that I thought would be a good size, grabbed the aida cloth that seemed like the right one, picked thread colours that seemed appropriate, and found patterns that worked with what I had.
The hippo took longer than I expected. It's a pretty simple design, but there's a surprising amount of detail in it.
The lettering really scared me; I was so worried about it being off center. It's not perfect, but I'm happy with how it turned out.
The red I used for "Caution!" caused me some consternation. I thought I already had the right shade on hand, but it turned out I didn't. It needed a special trip to the store to get the perfect shade of Canadian flag red (DMC 321), and it's not even showing up properly in the picture! This is what it really looks like (or as close as you can get on a screen):
And now for the real stress. The French writing.
The French lines involved longer words/phrases and several wide letters to try to fit in. Paranoid about running out of space, I narrowed the writing on "Attention!" I probably should've left it alone, but by the time I realized that, it was too late to change it.
My original plan was to put a maple leaf on either side of the hippo. Then I realized the French and English parts are equal-- it made no sense to have two large maple leaves and one small fleur de lys. As proud as I was of my freehand mini fleur de lys, it had to go.
For a second I thought about adding a tiny maple leaf to balance out the tiny fleur de lys, but I didn't want it getting too busy.
The final design! I'm happy with how it turned out, especially the fleur de lys, which not only ended up the right size, but is also a pretty good representation in both colour and style of Quebec's fleur de lys (my home province).
I also like to sign my needlepoints. It's always in a hidden spot, but I choose to believe some future needlework enthusiast will notice one of them and start an epic journey to find all the pieces of the mysterious "ASB."
This was actually my first time backing an embroidery hoop with felt. I used this video for the instructions. You can see in the picture above that my "fringe" of aida cloth looks messy and is also too wide. I ended up re-doing it, because it really shows through on the front.
I think that's better (at least there's less excess fabric). By the way, I know people pride themselves on the neatness of the backs of their embroidery pieces. That's great for them, but I can't be bothered. I do needlework to relax and for the love of creating-- I don't need the stress of making sure the back (that no one will see!) looks as good as the front.
I really enjoyed sewing the felt into place. I also enjoy sewing knit/crochet parts together too, which a lot of people seem to hate, so I think I just enjoy hand stitching. The felt isn't completely flat, because (despite my best efforts) it was a tiny bit too big. But it's not so bad that I needed to re-do it.
All done!
Now to get some mini hippos to leave around the house...
As a bonus, I had enough aida left to make a bookmark!
Anyone familiar with A Series of Unfortunate Events should recognize the quote :)
(Links take you to all available stores. Love Lies Bleeding and Bleeding Heart are also available in paperback.)
What projects are you working on lately? If you do needlepoint, do you care what the backs look like? Did you grow up with house hippos? Share in the comments...
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