Book Review: 50 Cross Stitch Quickies Animals and Friends

Animals are some of the most popular cross stitch motifs out there, and the Leisure Arts book 50 Cross Stitch Quickies: Animals and Friends by Plaid Bucilla features a bunch of cute and small scale animal patterns perfect of all sorts of projects.

All of the stitch counts are 35 by 35 or less, so they’re quick to stitch and perfect to use on cards, as tiny framed gifts, or even on tea towels, napkins or other little projects.

The patterns are arranged by theme as follows.

Animals of the sky: hummingbird, bee, goldfinch, ladybug, cardinal, robin, dragonfly, monarch butterfly, blue butterfly, bluebird
Farm animals: pony, chick, rooster, dog, goat, cow, cat, sheep, pig, bunny (in a spring floral hat!)
Forest animals: squirrel, wolf, fox, doe, raccoon, bear, chipmunk, moose, owl, black bear
Ocean animals: blue tang, dolphin, porpoise, clownfish, seahorse, crab, sea turtle, shark, octopus, whale tail
Safari animals: chimp, lion, zebra, tiger, lemur, crocodile, elephant, giraffe, leopard, gorilla

The patterns use mostly whole stitches, with some one-quarter and three-quarter stitches (learn more about partial stitches here) and back stitching to add details. Some are just the face of the animal while others show the whole body.

The book is laid out so there are two patterns on each page, with a photo of the stitched project, the chart and key. Charts are in black and white except for the back stitching.

The patterns are really cute and though they are small some of them include a lot of details. For instance the owl is just 33 by 31 stitches but it uses 10 colors to illustrate different colors of feathers and the bird’s eyes.

The booklet also includes two pages of general instructions on how to read charts, where and how to start and how to form stitches. If you’re totally new to cross stitch this should give you enough information to get started.

This book is really cute and has a nice variety of animals to stitch for people who like that particular animal, for a nursery or for other projects.

About the book: 32 pages, paperback, 50 patterns. Published 201y by Leisure Arts. Suggested retail price $9.99

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Bee Cross Stitch Patterns

One of the fun things about cross stitch is all the different surfaces you can stitch on. Of course regular cross stitch fabric is the most common, you can stitch on anything with holes (and even sometimes on things without holes, if you use water soluble cross stitch fabric.

An option that has become more popular with the widespread availability of laser cutting machines is wooden blanks, which are often cut in shape to be bookmarks, holiday ornaments or other simple shapes. They can be keychains, picture frames or necklaces.

(While not wooden I even have a stitchable journal that I cross-stitched on.)

Stitching on wood or heavy card stock isn’t the same as stitching with regular cross stitch fabric, so Craft with Cartwright wrote a post about how best to work with these wooden blanks.

The main thing to know is that you don’t need a sharp needle because the holes are drilled. She also has tips on how to manage your thread (she recommends one strand of embroidery floss folded in half) and finish your project if you need help with that.

Check out the post at Craft with Cartwright for tons of tips and ideas for working with wooden blanks.

Ready to try it out for yourself? You can get rectangular pieces your could mount to a journal yourself from Toms New Old Things.

Fiore Designs has square blanks that come in different sizes and colors for your crafting needs. I am putting some stamp shaped blanks from Lunari Woods on my wish list (they also have gift tags in different sizes and colors).

You can get stitchable keychains from Millions of Stitches, circles from Geniuses of Wood, baubles from Pip and Chip and Christmas ornament shapes from Happy Stitching Time to name just a few.

Have you ever stitched on a wooden blank? I’d love to hear any tips you have!

[Photo: Craft with Cartwright]

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