Regular readers will recall my friend Leila for whom I made a quilt last year. Scarily, it will soon be her birthday again, so I attach a photo first of the birthday card I made for her. The design is taken from one of my recent cross stitch magazines and as soon as I saw it I thought of her, as she likes to cosy up on the sofa, under her quilt with a nice cup of tea. On the original design, there are French knots on the ends of the letters in red, but I substituted seed beads. I'm pleased with how it turned out and have mounted it on a little card, which was one of a set that came free with another cross stitch magazine.

For her birthday, I will be buying her some goodies, but after Christmas I bought myself a little LizzieKate pattern with charms attached, called "Stitching friends". The design was quite small, and like all Lizzie Kate designs, has no backstitch and is nice and simple. It was a pleasure to stitch. On the colour illustration, they showed it on green fabric, but I stitched it on a pretty blue fabric with a "cloud" effect, and instead of the centre of the flower being stitched, I added beads. I bought the beads just before Christmas when I needed some thread and fell in love with the colour, without at that time having any clear idea what I would be doing with them. Anyway, this pattern is just perfect. Instead of stitching with two threads, I used three, as this gives a fatter, denser look to the design and colours. Now all I need to do is find a little frame to pop it into, wash and press it, and away it goes.

I also attach a picture of another little card I made, which is going to be a get well card, but at the moment, there is a multiplicity of candidates for its receipt! Again, another little design from a magazine, featuring daffodils in a pretty blue vase, which I mounted on another of the free cards from the set featured above. This one featured butterflies, which chimed nicely with the butterfly and flower sequins I stitched onto the card design. Finally topped it with some pretty adhesive ribbon along the base of the card, and a couple of adhesive butterflies along the sides of the card.