Beach Cross Stitch Patterns

This is the time of year when I start wishing it were time for a beach vacation (and my daughter has decided she doesn’t like the beach so the answer to that might be about five more years). Whether you live at the beach, have beach themed decor or just want to bring a bit of that sand and sea feeling into your summer decor, these beach cross stitch patterns are for you (and so are these beach inspired cross stitch patterns!).

Stitching Space has a pretty summer cross stitch pattern designed by Zefirnaya Vedma that includes a sandy beach, shells and starfish (as well as the word summer, but you could leave it off if you want). The design uses 27 colors and has whole, half and quarter stitches, so it’s for more intermediate or advanced stitches, but it sure is pretty! It is 80 by 106 stitches, which comes out to 14.5 by 19.2 cm or 5.7 by 7.5 inches when worked on 14 count fabric.

If you want to feel like you’re sitting in a deck chair on the beach, stitch up this project from The Little Art Veranda on Etsy. It features a pretty sunset in a cloudy sky alongside palm trees and chairs. It uses nine colors and is 140 by 140 stitches, which makes it 9.8 inches or 25 cm square on 14 count fabric.

Little Dove Samplers has a cute summer sampler with a pirate ship, lighthouse, seagulls, fish and more to stitch up. The colors used in the sample are really pretty together but you could also change the colors on the beach huts and fish if you wanted to. The design is 185 by 101 stitches, or 13.25 by 7.25 inches on 14 count fabric (that’s 33.6 by 18.4 cm).

Speaking of samplers, Hancock’s House of Happy has a free sampler style summer cross stitch pattern with little nautical symbols including ships, mermaids, crabs, seagulls and a lighthouse. You can use the individual motifs in projects or stitch up the full image as presented. As shown it uses 11 colors.

I feel like I have shared some of the beachy patterns from X Stitch Pattern X before but I can’t resist showing you this pretty round, which uses 12 colors and is 100 by 100 stitches. On 14 count fabric it’s 7.14 inches or 18.14 cm and uses only full cross stitches. Some day I’m going to make one of these!

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35+ Sunflower Cross Stitch Patterns

Lately I have been feeling like all of my clothes are looking a little worn or feeling a little tired. I don’t want to buy new clothes, though, so there’s been a lot of mending, altering and adding special touches to things that otherwise might get overlooked or not worn at all.

As an example, not too long ago I added a little bit of embroidery to a T-shirt, which was a lot of fun to do and made me start eyeing all my solid-colored garments and wondering how they might look with some stitching added.

Of course you can cross stitch on garments, too, whether T-shirts or woven tops, skirts, pants and more. But it can be tricky to transfer cross stitch designs to your garment to make stitching easier.

Much like with embroidery, it’s great to use a water soluble stabilizer to keep your fabric in place while you stitch and to transfer your design (or your cross stitch grid at least) while you’re stitching. Then you just wash away the stabilizer when you’re done and it will look like the stitching has always been there.

Ashley General Handmade uses Sulky Stick ‘n Stitch, which is a product I use, too. It’s easy to use and washes away cleanly.

To make it even easier, she designed some printable cross stitch grids at different counts that you can print out to draw your own cross stitch designs, but you can also print the grid right on the Sulky, so you can stitch on top of squares and then remove them when you’re done.

Brilliant, right?

She has pages as big as 8 count and all the way down to 20 (remember: the bigger the number the smaller the stitches will be) that you can download and print to make your own designs and also use to make stitching on clothing easier. I’m definitely going to try this the next time I want to cross stitch on fabric!

You can grab her printables over at Ashley General Handmade.

[Photo: Ashley General Handmade]

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