Merry Christmas Cabin Poster

Merry Christmas Cabin is worked as cross stitch, and the medium is the whole point: every fir, every lit window and every letter of the greeting is built from small squares of thread on open linen. A red timber cabin sits in deep snow with a path leading up to the door, pale mountains behind and spruce crowding the foreground, while scattered pale stitches read as falling snow. The greeting is sewn in deep red script across the top. A tartan border in navy, green and red frames the whole piece and carries the pattern to the edge. Up close the weave of the linen stays visible between the stitches.

This one wants wood and wool rather than white and chrome. A dark oak or walnut frame picks up the timber of the cabin and the red of the thread; black sharpens the tartan but cools the piece. Hang it in a hallway where people arrive with coats and snow, or in a living room beside a lamp with a warm bulb. It sits well above a sideboard with candles and pine, and it reads as a sampler rather than a print, so it suits a wall with other textiles.