My mother in law loves New York City, so last year I decided to make her a cross stitch of the Statue of Liberty for Christmas. I chose colors that were very similar and while I loved how it looked, I hated working on it and wasn’t going to finish in time for Christmas. So I switched to a different gift idea and put it aside for a year.

I revived the project and finished it for this Christmas. I ended up winging it because I had miscounted quite a few areas of the pattern.

I’m really happy with how it turned out, I like it a lot.

I also made another New York City present for her, a blackwork skyline. I used this free pattern of mine, and then filled in each building with separate blackwork patterns.

The first picture looks like the Aida is black but it’s actually a navy blue with yellow stitching. I wanted to give it a nighttime feel.

Working on this made me remember how much I love Blackwork. I have another Blackwork project that I started but haven’t finished. It’s on my WIP list that I’m slowly tackling this year, so you’ll see it eventually!