Chez Mounette recently posted a small sewing supply wallet or as I like to call it a “fancy little needle wallet” because that is the main sewing supply I use. She has a front and back design, both done up in redwork and they are both sweet little vingettes with birds and snails living in harmony in the garden area. Not so much like my garden, but I won’t think about that. And, did I mention, the charts are FREE! Of course, you can always alter the color of the design if red is not your favorite color. Since my favorite colors are red and black, I might want to do one side in red and one in black. I haven’t quite decided!
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Have you read?
How to Grid Cross Stitch Fabric
I’ve started (just barely, as you can see) a relatively big/complicated cross stitch project (the Baba Yaga house from Happy Little Mouse I told you about a while ago) and I knew that for this project I was going to need a little help keeping track of where I was and what I needed to do next.
Adding grids to your cross stitch fabric is a quick and easy way to help yourself when you’re working on a big project. Your chart will have grids marking off every 10 stitches and every 10 rows, so having those same markings on your fabric can only make it easier for you to follow along.
There are a few main ways to do this, which include marking the grid with thread (either embroidery floss, sewing thread, thread marketed for this purpose, or even fishing line!) or using fabric marking tools to draw the grid. Using a ruler when you do this helps a lot. Mine are still not that straight.
You can also buy cross stitch fabric that’s already marked, which of course makes it a lot easier, but it’s kind of expensive.
When marking your fabric it helps to know where the center of your fabric is, as well as where the center of the chart is relative to the grid marks so you can line them up.
This makes it a lot easier to orient yourself in the chart, and if you have a lot of one color all together it can make it easier to count stitches. Say you had 23 stitches in a row of the same color; stitching across two squares plus three stitches is a lot easier to keep track of than having to manually count them as you go.
Want to learn more about gridding cross stitch fabric and why you would want to? Check out my post all about ways to grid cross stitch fabric over at Our Daily Craft.
[Photo: Our Daily Craft]
Carolyn in VA says
What a sweet little pattern, thanks for finding it and passing it on!
One note though: this design is not Redwork, it is actually Blackwork (irregardless of color of thread). The difference is in the stitching: Blackwork is ‘counted-thread’, while Redwork is ’embroidery’. The ground fabric is different, and while Blackwork is stitched from a chart, Redwork is often embroidered from a drawing (often on the fabric itself), or freehand. Nowadays, either can be in any color, although historically they were their name-color. = )