A Cross Stitch I Spy at the Beach

That headline pretty much describes the Under the Sea cross stitch pattern from Una Buena Pieza, which is covered with shells, fish and other creatures of the sea. It’s not intended to be an I spy, I don’t think, and most of the same kinds of animals are grouped together, but I think it would be fun for someone who didn’t stitch it to look and see what different things they can find within.

The pattern includes turtles, jellyfish, a whale, shark, ray, all sorts of fish and shells and I’m sure other things that I’m not noticing right now. Dolphins! Coral! Seagulls!

It looks like it would be super fun to stitch and fun to have on the wall during the summer months, or even hang in a kid’s room if you know a young one who loves the beach or ocean animals.

The design is 110 by 220 stitches. It comes out to about 8 by 16 inches, or 20 by 40 cm, when stitched on 14 count fabric. It calls for 19 colors.

This design looks great on light blue fabric as shown, but in the pattern listing on Etsy you’ll also see what it looks like on a darker blue and a white fabric, and they all look pretty good so you can use whatever color you like to suit your decor or your idea of what color the “ocean” should be. There’s even a customer photo that looks like it was done on a sort of tie-dyed green fabricc, which is really fun.

However you stitch it, I think this project would go faster than you imagine because there are so many fun little things to stitch. It will be hard to get bored when you can just move on to a different animal or part of the design.

Check out this pattern from Una Buena Pieza on Etsy.

[Photo: Una Buena Pieza]

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Cross Stitch Patterns Inspired by the Beach

I am known to be really paranoid when it comes to cutting cross stitch fabric for a project. I will math it out, count, recount, think about it, worry, decide it needs to be bigger than math plus my already large margin for error suggests. If I could just be confident in choosing the correct size of fabric I’d have a lot more stitching time!

Sometimes you have a lot of extra fabric beyond where you are stitching because your fabric is too big. Or maybe you’re just working on a big project that leaves excess fabric potentially in your way when you are stitching.

Hannah Hand Makes has a post all about how to deal with excess fabric on the sides of a large cross stitch project (which is actually a podcast if you’d rather listen). She is talking more about huge stitchalong projects where you need a big piece of fabric than my particular problem of timid cutting, but the same advice applies.

I am lazy and don’t want to buy new products, so I would probably devise some sort of rolling and clamping situation with items I already have in the house, but she has some great tips for actual products you can buy that will help with this situation such as large hoops, standing frames and scroll frames. One of these solutions would certainly be worth the investment if you’re doing a year long (or otherwise long term) stitchalong or really big project where that excess fabric is going to cause problems.

Because beyond being annoying, odds are good I’m going to end up stitching right through that extra fabric and making a big mess.

Check out all the tips for working with a really big piece of cross stitch fabric over at Hannah Hand Makes.

What’s the biggest cross stitch project you’ve ever made? I’d love to hear all about it!

[Photo: Hannah Hand Makes]

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