Book Review – Just CrossStitch Christmas Ornaments

Celebrate the most wonderful time of the year with 70+ patterns featuring our favorite designers. Through 9 festive chapters, this issue covers all styles and skill levels to make ornaments you’ll love to gift or display!

Jingle all the way! A simple pattern with a complex design, the Jingle Bells ornament features phrases from classic Christmas carols stitched with vibrant colors in the shape of a ringing bell. The bright red, green and gold are sure to help you ring in the new year!
Tender and mild. Capture the essence of a cathedral window in a gorgeous ornament. The Mary & Jesus Stained Glass pattern showcases the simple design of the mother and child in rich, electric blue that stands out from the black background.
A touch of elegance for your tree! Designed by the famous needle artist Giulia Manfredini, A Christmas Dress is a lovely design worked with full cross stitches and backstitches on sparkling fabric. Detailed finishing instructions will have you completing it before your tree is up!

Plus, you won’t want to miss our bonus Recipes & Memories chapter, packed full of holiday memories and favorite recipes from our featured designers. Download (or subscribe!) today!

Looking for more Christmas Cross Stitch patterns? Check these out on Etsy.

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Unique St. Patrick's Day 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]

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