Her Ladyship has Arrived

Her Ladyship has Arrived by Dana Batho of Peacock & Fig — a baby-girl announcement design built around a vintage-style jewelled crown over a laurel-wreath cartouche, with the new arrival’s name and birth date worked into the wreath. The chart includes an alphabet so the bottom block can be customized to each baby.

I stitched it twice — once for each of my nieces — finishing the first on February 27, 2022 and the second on March 11, 2022, about two weeks apart. Same chart, same fabric, same threads on both, just different names and dates in the cartouche.

Stitched on 40ct Dreams of Spring linen — a soft pastel hand-dyed linen with washes of lavender and cream that picks up the crown’s jewel tones and gives the whole piece a slightly dreamy, faded-storybook feel. The chart is technically designed for 25ct Lugana, but going down to 40ct shrinks the finished size and tightens the detail in the crown’s metallic work, which I liked. The linen came from Stitchville USA a LNS that has since closed.

Threads are DMC for the main work plus Kreinik metallics for the gold and silver in the crown — the metallics are what make this design, since the jewels and crown band are most of the visual weight and they need to actually catch light to read as jewels rather than flat shapes.

Both pieces are finished into matching purple round wooden frames so they read as a set when the girls eventually have them up in the same room or get to compare them at family gatherings.