Beaded Cross-Stitch Treasures: Designs from Mill Hill

This book has a lot of different and interesting projects in it. Something for everyone.

I stitched the Anniversary Oval on pages 93 and 94 as an anniversary gift and it turned out very nice. However, I had to find my own letters and numbers for it since they weren't included in the book. I also stitched the Halloween and Thanksgiving projects into pins and magnets that turned out well too.

Beads add a beautiful new dimension to cross-stitch and this book makes it easy to do. It has around 100 very small designs: lots of hearts,flowers and baskets,cute little houses,angels,halloween and christmas ornaments. There are also around ten (a little bit larger)beautiful samplers. The charts are well defined with clear instructions. The designs are small but very charming and cute. I also used some of the designs for x-stitching without beads and the results were very pretty.

This book has many patterns (wish I had the book here to count!). Almost all are small--ranging from pin size to ornaments--with only one larger sampler piece. (That pillow on the cover is not as big as it seems.) All patterns are suitable for beginners but more advanced stitchers will find these patterns work up quickly enough for presents. There are a number of patterns that could be used to represent months (like an umbrella for March and flowers for May) if you are into that new seasonal craze. Great book if you like the Mill Hill beaded stitchery kits.

This book contains detailed instruction for beading on fabric or perforated paper. Many of the projects shown were available in kit form in years past. Projects range in size from 1.5 inches to detailed samplers. Colorful photos and clear charts make these projects easy to follow. The designs are beautiful and many can be completed in a few hours.