Butterfly Cross Stitch Patterns

I love watching out for when the butterflies start heading back north in the spring. Every year I want to plant more flowers in the hope of drawing more butterflies to my yard. If it’s not yet time for butterflies where you live, you can always stitch some with these butterfly cross stitch patterns.

The World in Stitches has a pretty retro butterfly pattern complete with little flower motifs (which of course you could leave off if you just want to have the butterfly buy itself). The full design by Colleen Carrington measures 73 by 76 stitches, which is 5.21 by 5.43 inches or 31.24 by 13.79 cm on 14 count fabric. It uses 11 colors.

Purple Leaf Designs has a pretty purple (of course!) butterfly pattern that you can get for free when you sign up for emails. If you’re not as big a fan of purple, sub in shades of whatever color you like.

Stitched Modern has a cool collection of butterflies (and maybe some moths, too?) designed by Dear Sukie, which would be fun to stitch all together as shown, or you can work up individual butterflies in their own hoops. If you stitch it all together it measures 147 by 121 stitches, or 10.5 by 8.6 inches (26.6 by 21.8 cm) on 14 count fabric.

Stitch up a full specimen board of butterflies with this big design full of tiny butterflies from Tiny Cross Stitch Co on Etsy. In this 235 stitch square project you’ll find 100 little butterflies. On 16 count fabric it comes out to 13 inches/33cm square. Or take individual butterflies and stitch them on napkins, use them as a border for another project, add to cards or bookmarks…so many ways to use them!

Speaking of using butterflies as a border, the butterflies on this design from Cross with Me only take up about half of the fabric needed to fill a hoop, so you could easily add in some text or a flower or just leave the white space. I think this would look great on a sky blue fabric as well. The design uses 12 colors and measures 115 by 151 stitches.

These folk art butterflies don’t exactly look natural, but they sure are pretty and would be great as decor in a room with a boho feel. The design is from Stitchrovia and measures 178 by 180 stitches. On 14 count fabric it comes out to around 13 by 13 inches, or 33 cm.

Spring Butterflies Cross Stitch Pattern

Flowers and Butterflies

Blue Butterfly Cross Stitch Pattern

Check out these flower Embroidery kits we found on Amazon

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35+ Sunflower Cross Stitch Patterns

A while back I made a little rainbow cross stitch pattern and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it, so I turned it into a patch. My idea was that it could be used on a jacket or backpack, or you could add a pin to the back and wear it temporarily on a shirt or elsewhere.

But what if you want to make your design more permanent? Is it possible to turn a piece of cross stitch into an iron-on design?

It turns out yes, it is, and Sirious Stitches has done it so I didn’t have to try to figure it out on my own.

The way they did it was by using HeatnBond, an iron-on adhesive that attaches fabrics without sewing. There was still sewing involved to finish the edges of the cross stitch fabric and make it look like a purchased patch. The post shows how to do this by hand or with your sewing machine. (I just did blanket stitch edging on mine, which doesn’t look like a “real” patch but is also a lot faster.)

Once you have the patch prepared it’s a pretty easy matter of using the fusible adhesive to the back of the patch so you can then iron it onto whatever jacket, pair of jeans, bag or whatever else you might want to add it to.

I guess I’m a little paranoid about the washability of cross stitch projects, though you could hand wash anything with an iron-on cross stitch patch as you might need to with a purchased iron-on patch, anyway. But this does look really cool and is a great option if you know you want to permanently add a cross stitch patch to a garment of bag.

Get the full tutorial over at Sirious Stitches. Would you add an iron-on cross stitch patch to something? I’d love to hear what you would use this technique for!

[Photo: Sirious Stitches]

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