Christmas Bells

Work is coming along on my Christmas rug and the little bell garland is now done.  My next goal is to work on the background until I reach a point where I can start the middle picture. 

I have found through mistakes in the past that if I count my way up or down to a section that is more than 10 stitches away, I invariably make a mistake and my motif is in the wrong place. Therefore I work the background now until I reach the motif.  This way I can't make that mistake again. 

This pattern has 8 stitches between the middle bottom bell and the start of the tree skirt but as I am not totally positive I would count correctly, I will begin the background in the bottom left corner and work my way towards the tree skirt.  I intend to use basketweave stitch for the background.

If you are unfamiliar with the Basketweave stitch there is a great description of it here: Basketweave . I have used Tent or Continental stitch for the border and have found that basketweave is a nice stitch to do when covering larger areas of stitching in the same color. It also helps keep my rug more square after I have blocked it.