Book Review: Cross Stitch Celebrations Bundle of Joy!

Many crafters like to use their skills to make gifts for new babies, and when it comes to cross stitch, making a stitched birth announcement is a classic.

These projects often include the baby’s name along with information like date of birth and sometimes time of birth, weight and height. There’s often a cute animal or some other design included.

They’re very personal projects, and there’s a lot to think about if you’re making one for your little one or a baby you know. Mollie Johanson covers the basics of designing, planning and stitching cross stitch baby announcements, with lots of options for you to choose from, in her book Cross Stitch Celebrations: Bundle of Joy!

The beginning of the book covers the basics of cross stitch and then goes into a lot of detail about how you might approach designing your own cross stitch birth announcement. It shows how to sketch out your design on paper so you know how everything fits together and how big it will be before you start stitching. There are also tips on choosing colors, placement of designs and how to change the patterns shown in the book.

After these instructions you’ll find more than 20 options for your project, including baby animals like bears, bunnies, elephants and owls; border patterns such as leaves, scallops, gingham and chevrons; and little motifs you can sprinkle into your projects like hearts, rainbows and paw prints.

Then there are four alphabets to choose from, including tips on placement and spacing.

Finally you’ll find a design gallery with finished projects and instructions on how to make them. The options are a framed announcement, a hoop that’s an animal and the baby’s name, and an announcement attached to a canvas with no frame (the one shown is for twins, which is nice to see as an option if you aren’t sure how to do that but need it).

Each pattern is shown with the colors she used and has a chart as well as written instructions and a photo of the finished design. These are all just jumping off points for stitchers to make their own projects for the little ones in their lives.

Cross Stitch Celebrations: Bundle of Joy! is full of cute ideas for stitchers of all skill levels to make pretty birth announcements and other cross stitch projects for baby.

About the book: 96 pages, paperback. Published 2022 by Walter Foster Publishing. Suggested retail price $19.99.

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Cross Stitch Birth Announcements

Unique Stitch Crafts is a Turkish designer that has a couple of main interests in their cross stitch designs: travel and Christmas stockings.

By far the biggest category in their storefront is Christmas stockings, with more than 100 options to choose from. There are fully stitched fronts with designs classic and whimsical (like an alicorn and a pastel rainbow, or a bunny in Harlequin costume playing violin to a mushroom) and designs that just go across the cuff of the stocking. There are ornaments with a Nutcracker or Frozen theme, New York City stockings and stockings for your dinosaur.

As an example, here’s a stocking covered with mini holiday designs, which you could also use as ornaments if you wanted. The full design is 165 by 255 stitches, which comes out to 10.3 by 16 inches, or 26 by 40.6 cm on 16 count fabric. The pattern just makes the front of the stocking so you need to grab some fabric for the back of the stocking and sew it together yourself.

There’s also a large collection of travel cross stitch patterns, including national parks designs both large and mini, and travel poster style designs for many US states and cities. (There’s not an Arkansas, which is my standard test since I live there, but there is a pattern of the Mississippi River bridge in Memphis, which is technically half in Arkansas.)

If you’re more of a world traveler you’ll find more of the travel poster style designs for cities and countries, including Thailand and China, Berlin, Sydney and Marrakech.

In addition to all of that, you’ll find patterns called retro, which includes a wide range of designs, but many seem to be food and coffee related; folk art designs (lots of flowers and birds); and famous paintings translated to cross stitch. Smaller categories include Christmas, Halloween, animals, kids and castles.

Check out all the fun designs at Unique Stitch Crafts on Etsy.

[Photo: Unique Stitch Crafts]

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