Dear Santa, Define Good

Dear Santa, Define Good by New York Dreamer Needleworks — a small Christmas sampler that opens Dear Santa, in green and red letters, then asks the question every adult quietly wants answered before December 25: Define Good. The motifs around the lettering keep the tone polite — a small fir tree at top-left, a row of red striped stockings at top-right, a snowman beside a blue mailbox (red flag up, ready for delivery) at middle-left — and a tidy green-and-red checkered border runs along the bottom to round it off. Scattered white snow dots fill the unstitched ground. Initials and year (TT 24) signed in the lower right.

Stitched on a Be Stitch Me grab-bag hand-dyed green evenweave I had in my stash — the mottled pale sea-foam ground does the snow-sky background work without needing any extra stitching.

Threads are a mix of Weeks Dye Works overdyes and DMC — the Weeks colours are Snowflake (4125) for the snowman and white snow flecks, Turkish Red (2266) for the red lettering and stockings, Holly (1279) and Monkey Grass (2188) for the greens, and Raspberry Jam (7021) for the deeper red tones, with DMC filling in the rest (a dark charcoal for the mailbox post and a soft orange for the carrot nose). The Weeks overdyes give the lettering and motifs the slow tonal shifts that keep the joke from reading flat — without them Dear Santa would sit too even on the fabric.

Finished March 4, 2024.