A to Z Challenge: M is for Margaret Sherry

Today is Day 13 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge.  If you are new to the blog and haven't heard of this challenge before, the basic idea is to blog (almost) every day in April, taking one day for each letter of the alphabet. Since I have a cross stitch blog, I am blogging about cross stitch patterns in my stash and on my wish list for this month of April.

M is for Margaret Sherry

I first discovered Margaret Sherry when I was about 10 and I was helping my Grandma put out the new cards at the grocery store.  She had a job rotating out the seasonal cards by American Greetings, and there was also a rack of cards from Leanin' Tree.  When I saw these unbelieveable cute cat cards, I just fell in love with them instantly (yes, I've been a cat person my whole life).

I didn't see anything else Margaret Sherry for several years, until getting back into cross stitch last year, when I discovered the wonderful British cross stitch magazines thanks to my Kindle apps.  Here was the artist whose cards I had loved since I was little, and even better, her art was in cross stitch!  And although I fell in love with her cat art, I found out she does all sorts of animals too, all of which I love.  

Sadly, Margaret's designs are a little more challenge for those of us in the US to get a hold of.  Shipping from the UK to here in Mississippi is quite expensive, so it's hard for me to order a lot of her kits (the new ones by Bothy Threads are great!)  But because Margaret does contribute to the magazines pretty regularly, they're a great way to get a hold of her patterns at a reasonable price.  I was flipping through back issues last night searching for some alphabets for a future project, and in the process I was amazed to realize how many Margaret Sherry patterns I have. 

I have two lucky MS stashes I managed to find on eBay.  The first is a 2009 calendar that was put out by CrossStitcher magazine.  Each month features a square pattern featuring a cute little critter/critters and a funny saying to go along with it.  I was instantly drawn to this pattern called Choc-o-holic, because well, I'm addicted to chocolate.  Fun note: this pattern was originally part of my list of 31 starts for the Crazy January Challenge, but it got pushed aside from that list for a bit of obligatory stitching instead.  But I still have it kitted up and ready to go whenever I have a free stitching moment!

I love pretty much all of the designs from this calendar, but next on my stitching list would probably be the Chatter Box one, which I plan on making for my mom.  She's a bit of a social butterfly when she's talking to her friends, and I like that they are chickens in this pattern, since her signature greeting to her friends is "Hey chick!"

As I shared in my March Stitch from Stash post, I also found the 2012 MS Stitcher's Diary on eBay recently.  The package finally just got here (long transit from the UK) and I had a fun afternoon of flipping through these 12 designs.  There's some great ones in here that will definitely be going on my stitching list as soon as I get more comfortable stitching on evenweave.

My biggest planned Margaret Sherry project to date is I would like to stitch all 26 letters of the alphabet she published for CrossStitcher Magazine.  Each letter is a little over 40 x 40 stitches, so doing them all together will be a big undertaking!  I'd like to stitch them all as individual patches and have my aunt help me sew them together in a quilt, but we'll have to see what happens.

As I mentioned before, MS designs are a little hard to track down in the US, especially some of her older ones, so although I have several on my wish list, the pattern of hers I would most like to find is this one for The Twelve Days of Christmas.  I haven't had any luck getting it from eBay for a decent price + shipping yet, but I'm crossing my fingers I can get my hands on it soon!  Although I suppose I have plenty to work on in the meantime, really. 


I have to say, the only two things I don't like about Margaret's patterns are the fact that they are almost always charted in Anchor colors (and I only have DMC threads, sadly), and the fractional stitches and backstitch.  The backstitch always makes the design stand out and totally would not be complete without it, but these are definitely designs that will always be harder to work on Aida!

So after another long and lengthy post, I thank you if you've stuck with me so far.  I realize now I probably should have planned these designer posts a little more spread out.   I promise tomorrow's N post will be much shorter!

One of the other A to Z blogs I've been reading had the excellent idea of adding links to previous posts at the end of a particular day.  So if you'd like to see my previous A to Z entries:

A is for  Alphabet
B is for Britty Kitty
C is for Carousel
D is for Debbie Mumm
E is for Eat
F is for Frogs
G is for Garden Cat
H is for Hats 
I is for Ice
J is for Joan Elliott 
K is for Kokeshi 
L is for Lesley Teare