My first finish of the new year was the Mill Hill Jingle ornament cross stitch kit, I actually finished it a few days ago on January 2nd. These little kits from Mill Hill are a lot of fun and I’ve stitched a few of their ornament kits before so I knew I was going to get a great product when I ordered them. (I also ordered the Frosty kit, but haven’t started stitching it yet.)

Kit includes: Beads, charms, perforated paper, needles, floss, chart and instructions.

When I looked at it online I thought it was stitched on a plastic canvas material, but it is perforated paper. (my own mistake for not fully reading the description!) While Mill Hill makes a great quality strong perforated paper for stitching, do be careful because it will tear if you’re too rough on it.

I made it through with no tears, but I came close to tearing it when I was trying to tuck a short end piece under stitches on the back.

I think my only complaint about this kit was that there was just enough of the white floss to complete the stitching, I had but a tiny three inch two strand scrap left when I was finished. Now, I did make a mistake and have to “frog” a little bit, maybe 10 stitches.

So, if you’re a one-X-at-a-time style stitcher and you pick up this kit, be mindful that you may need a little bit of extra white to finish up. I stitch all to the right across and then all to the left back across and I ran out, and usually one-X-at-a-time takes up a bit more floss, not a lot more, but in this case enough extra that you might run out of the white. I did have plenty left of all the other colors.

When it came to beads there were plenty of those too in case you find any irregular shaped ones in your bag. However, the beads are not sorted like they would be if you were buying your beads individually, so you do have to pick the gold apart from the red. Fortunately, there were only two colors with this kit, red and gold. Frosty has way more bead colors, which is why I haven’t started it yet, because I didn’t want to pick through the beads right now and sort them out.

For finishing the kit suggests that you create a beaded hanger by threading red beads onto two strands of floss, and that’s how it’s finished in the model photo online and on the cover of the kit. (Pictured here at left)

However, in my opinion this is a heavy ornament when it’s finished and I was worried about that not being strong enough on my tree… after all I do have four kids and a cat to think about when it comes to ornaments.

So, I’m going to add a felt backing to mine and use a thicker ribbon hanger that runs through the “sandwich” of ornaments and backing instead. I might use the leftover beads to make a tassel or double up the hanger, I haven’t decided yet.

==> Click here if you’d like to grab the Mill Hill Jingle Ornament Cross Stitch kit to your stash and stitch it for the 2011 holidays!

Happy Stitching!
Kind Regards,