Hey, so my very good pal turned 40 last year and I knew I wanted to make them something special so I very sneakily asked them their top 5 albums and from the list I selected one to stitch up.

I headed over to Floss Cross - a website where you can make your own cross stitch patterns and upload a picture of MIA Arular Album. Once uploaded you can edit the size, number of stitches and the number of colours, you can even edit it before saving and printing a version.

I decided to make this so it was 12 inches x 12 inches so it was like an album cover.

This one measured30cm x 30cm / 12 inches x 12 inches
Stitched on 10 count aida and was 14,400 cross stitches - 28,800 stitches and took about 48 hours work.
Once finished I swore I would not stitch up another, until a month later when by Brother-In-Laws 40th Birthday was approaching and I wanted a project for when I was on holiday. I asked twinny ans she immediately replied and told me to do Radiohead’s Kid A. Heading back over to Floss Cross I uploaded the pattern and got stitching.

This one was slower going and I had to get a local framer to cut a mount to fit the finished cross stitch as I had not measured it correctly. I finished this and then immediately stated one for my partner Ed who also turns 40 this year. He choose a Captain Beefheart - Trout Mask Replica which has a red background so I decided to stitch it on to red aida.

I have taped the edges of the aida to stop fraying and added markers every 10 stitches, I also used a water soluble pen to draw a grid of 10s to make finding where I am a little easier.

If you fancy stitching your own, let me know!