Time for the next step in the 2016 Round In Circles Stitch-Along: you can now sign up! Another month until you can get your needles and threads out, but until then here is a bit more about the designs we’ll be stitching – something about the cost of doing the SAL, some ideas for stitchers who would like to vary their fabrics but not by colour, and a bit more information for those of you who have decided to do the White version (whether on coloured or white fabric).

Will the SAL eat heavily into your stash budget? It could, very easily, if you decided for example to stitch it using hand-dyed silk perles and silk ribbon and stranded silks on fine linen, and to use pure gold spangles instead of sequins. But it doesn’t have to. Assuming you buy your threads, beads, metallic braid and fabric from Sew & So in one purchase; sequins, sheer ribbon and a piece of felt from a local haberdashery shop; and metallic kid leather from Golden Hinde, then a white-on-white version on Hardanger fabric can be done for well under £35 (including postage and signing up for the SAL) or less than £3 per month. That is if there are absolutely no suitable threads, beads or scraps of felt in your stash and you have to buy everything from scratch, but you may well be able to use bits and pieces you already have. And of course there’s always Christmas/birthday/anniversary presents .

What if you would like to experiment a bit with your fabrics, but you’d rather not use colour? Well, one option is to vary the count and raw material – that is to say, you could do some months on cotton, some on linen, some on mixed fabrics; and the counts could be anything from 18ct Davosa and 22ct Hardanger (cotton) to 22ct Fine Ariosa and 20ct, 25ct, 28ct and 32ct Lugana (cotton mix), from 18ct, 25ct and 32ct Floba (linen mix) to the Zweigart pure linens which range from 20ct to 55ct (that last one not recommended unless you’ve got extremely good eyesight…). Some of them even come with a little sparkle!

And finally a bit about stitching the SAL in white only. I have a confession to make. It’s not strictly speaking possible. The SAL includes a few stitches which only work in two colours, and one stitch which looks better in two colours than in one. This is why the materials list for the White version includes gold or silver braid. However, you could opt for a sparkly white braid (like Kreinik #4 5760 Marshmallow) – this would give enough contrast to make the aforementioned stitches work, while keeping the overal look white. If you’re happy to add a touch of gold or silver, you might want to add it to all twelve months, not just the ones where it is specified; so in those months where sparkle isn’t necessary I will suggest which stitches you could do in metallic braid anyway (if I forget, remind me).

For the stitched models I used the Colour version, but throughout 2016 I’ll be stitching the White version on those lovely hand-dyed fabrics I showed you a while ago. And this is what I’ll be stitching with, all neatly arranged into a seasonal tree shape as promised in the post title . I’m looking forward to using them!