I love the idea of wooden stitchable pieces. In fact, this is the third wooden piece I’ve done. (Check out my butterfly here and my keychain here.) I haven’t been very happy with my experience with any of these project, but sadly this most recent kit was the worst of the bunch.
Bucilla Stitchable Shapes – Santa
The wooden piece itself is nice. It is surprisingly thick, and the holes are all drilled completely through. Everything is finished nicely, so there are no rough areas for your floss to get caught on. The instructions, though, are barely adequate. It is difficult to decipher which holes you need to be using for the stitches zigzagging across the hat and the moustache. And, weirdly, the translation into French and Spanish is patchy. (E.g. Step 3 is repeated in English for all three languages.)
Ooops, no more white but all kinds of other colours are left.
Where the kit really falls down is in the supplied cotton floss. Not only is the floss poor quality (DMC it is not), there is both too much and not enough. It seems like the same bundle of floss is thrown in all the kits in this series, so you are given lots of colours that you don’t need. However, there was nowhere near enough white to finish off this piece. (See the picture above. That is all the floss I had left, and all the empty areas needed to be stitched white.) Thankfully, I was able to more or less match the white included in the kit with some old J&P Coats floss, and then I finished off the swirls in the beard using DMC E5200 Light Effects. (I used Light Effects because I was feeling masochistic that day.)
Santa and his sparkly beard
I’m happy with the finished product, but I will not buy another one of these kits. For the price, I most certainly expect to have all the materials I need to finish the project as it is charted. :/
(This is an edited and expanded version of my review for this item on Amazon.ca.)
Needleworker, Knitter, Crocheter, Sewist, Paper Crafter, and more!
That’s very disappointing when it happens. You are so excited to get started then you feel like throwing it away when things don’t work. I’m so glad you stuck with it to get it finished.
I love that it looks like a sugar cookie
It does look lovely when done, but thanks for the heads up. Such a shame when kits aren’t packed with care.
It looks very sweet, but exasperating!
It’s cute….
xxx
Sorry you didn’t like the kit, but it did turn out cute. Looks like a sugar cookie!
It finished really nice – I do love it – special thanks for the review. These are the things it is so important to know before purchasing.
Well I’m glad to read this as I thought these were cute. Now I know not to fall for it. It did turn out beautiful though.
That is a lovely finish, it is a pity that the kit was such poor quality. I’m sure there are some far less experienced stitchers who would have really struggled.
Hi Heather: Love the looks of the wooden cross stitch projects, however I have been disappointed when buying full stitch kits, I have tried to contact the companies and they say they cannot help, and some are very helpful.
Love the Santa he is adorable.
I agree with Tracy it does look like a sugar cookie.
Blessings
Catherine
The wooden piece looks great but how frustrating about the threads and the instructions too. You can’t even use the leftover threads if they are not DMC.
ps you missed a stitch! In his hat. Or is that supposed to be to thread the twine through to attach him to the parcel?
It’s a very cute piece. Sorry it was a bad stitching experience. Very strange colors to have left over from a Christmas piece.
Lol I hate light effects thread with the one exception being the glow in the dark. It looks great!