Cross-Stitch

Charts, patterns and everything needlepoint

Book Review: Bob Ross Cross Stitch

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Bob Ross is well known for his leisurely approach to creativity, producing paintings on the fly that might have “mistakes” covered up by happy little trees, or clouds, or just left to be an expression of a happy accident.

Cross-stitch designer Haley Pierson-Cox took Ross’ famous quotes and aesthetic as inspiration for the designs in Bob Ross Cross Stitch, which includes 12 patterns and a kit with supplies to make two of the projects.

The patterns include a lot of text, with phrases like “There is an artist hidden in every single one of us” surrounded by painting supplies or “anything we don’t like, we turn it into a happy little tree” with, of course, trees.

I looked at a PDF copy of this book but it looked like the charts were well-sized and easy to read. This would be a fun book for anyone who likes Bob Ross, or you can stitch up these sweet and colorful projects for your Ross-loving friends. What a great confluence of two great crafts, painting and cross stitch.

Bob Ross Cross Stitch is set to be released Aug. 30, 2022. You can preorder it on Amazon.

About the book: 48 pages, 12 patterns plus cross-stitch materials. Published August 2022 by becker&meyer! books. Suggested retail price $22.99. Publisher’s website.

Have you read?

Toy Story Cross Stitch Patterns

I’m going to go ahead and admit that I totally missed Toy Story 4, so it took my by surprise when Toy Story 5 came out, but let’s celebrate with some Toy Story cross stitch patterns. 

This sweet design including Woody, Buzz and Jessie is from The Xstitch Shop, and they actually have a few different Toy Story options. This one says it is for intermediate stitches, probably because of the size and number of colors, but the sales page doesn’t say how big it is or how many colors it uses. It’s still cute, though!

If you’ve got a fan of Jessie in your household, this collection of Jessie themed icons is super cute to stitch. The design is from Mercury Stitches and it measures 97 by 144 stitches. that comes out to 6.9 by 10.3 inches, or 17.6 by 26.1 cm, and uses 11 colors. It has full and half cross stitches, as well as back stitching and French knots. 

Share the love of friendship with this sweet Woody and Buzz heart hands cross stitch pattern from Pixell Patterns. This design uses eight colors and is shown worked on 14 count fabric, but the notes don’t indicate how bit is is (based on a finished project photo, though, it looks pretty big). 

And for the Buzz Lightyear fans, of course we have to have a “To infinity and beyond” pattern, so here’s one from Silver Lake Stitches. This design is super cute on blue fabric, but use whatever you have. It measures 78 by 92 stitches, which comes out to 5.6 by 6.6 inches, or 14.2 by 16.7 cm, on 14 count fabric. It calls for 14 colors. 

Or if you want to go beyond the core three main character toys, check out this project from ThreeOOne Patterns, which includes our main toys as well as Bo Peep and her sheep, Bullseye the horse, the Slinky dog, Rex, Ham, the Potato Heads and an alien. The design is 310 by 80 stitches, which comes out to 21.14 by 3.5 inches, or 53.7 by 8.9 cm, when worked on 14 count fabric. It uses 65 colors. Or pick out your favorite characters to make a smaller project. 

All those characters and a few more are found on the mini Toy Story character sampler from Knotalot UK (only part of which is shown above). This one uses 31 colors and measures 134 by 108 stitches. It includes whole and fractional stitches, as well as back stitching. On 14 count fabric stitching the whole thing would make a project that’s 9.57 by 7.71 inches, or 24.31 by 19.59 cm.