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!

Next Pattern:

35+ Sunflower Cross Stitch Patterns

I love the look of variegated cross stitch floss and how it makes it possible to stitch with a variety of colors without changing thread, giving your project more depth and a more complex look without you having to do anything different.

Or at least not much different. I recently came across this blog post from The Copper Fox all about how to use variegated floss and it noted that many people would say it’s a good idea to complete a whole stitch (when you’re stitching whole cross stitches) with the floss before going on to the next stitch. Most of us stitch row by row, but of course if you do that with variegated yarn, it could change color along the way and you’ll end up with stitches that are half one color and half another color or a different shade.

Of course that makes total sense but I’d never thought about it.

The post includes swatches with different kinds of variegated threads to show the different between working stitch by stitch or row by row, and it doesn’t make a huge different over the small area shown but I can see how it might make a difference if you had really long rows or if you just want to make sure your stitches are a single color whenever possible.

In addition to this experiment, the post talks about other ways to work with multicolored floss, including deliberately mixing the colors among the strands of floss you are stitching with and stitching in a different order instead of right to left and top to bottom (or whatever direction you typically work) to get different effects from the thread.

It’s fun to geek out on this stuff because it can make a difference if you want to play with it, or you can just stitch on without giving it much thought, and both will give you good results.

Check out all the experiments at The Copper Fox.

Do you do anything different when you stitch with variegated floss? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: The Copper Fox]

Next Pattern:

Have you read?