Cross-Stitch

Charts, patterns and everything needlepoint

Cross Stitch Cards for All Occasions

by

I have never stitched a greeting card, but I kind of like the idea of it. It’s a card and a gift all in one, and hopefully one the recipient will hang onto for years to come. 

This collection of easy and colorful greeting card cross stitch patterns from Susan Bates (via Gathered) are a great place to start if you want to stitch your own greeting cards. 

These text-based designs cover a lot of card-sending events, such as:

  • get well soon
  • happy birthday
  • thank you
  • thinking of you
  • congratulations
  • anniversary
  • new home
  • good luck

The lettering is done in gradients and there are other details like hearts and stars, a house key and a gift, depending on the text. There are full cross stitches and back stitch on all of the cards, and they use 15 colors for the cross stitching and six for the back stitching (and just two colors are used for both, so it’s 19 colors total). 

The designs vary a bit in size but the biggest one is 52 by 67 stitches, which comes out to 3.75 by 4.75 inches or 9.5 by 12 cm when worked on 14 count fabric or 28 count evenweave. The text suggests beads are also used in the patterns but there’s no note of them in the key, so go wild and add some beads if you like. 

Designs are worked on a price of 6 by 8 inch/15 by 20 cm fabric and then mounted to a card with a colorful baking piece of card stock behind it. This is easy to assemble with whatever cardstock greeting cards you have on hand.

You can get the free charts as a PDF from Gathered. 

Have you ever stitched your own greeting cards? I’d love to hear about it, or let me know if these inspire you to try. 

[Photo: Susan Bates via Gathered]

 

Have you read?

Cross Stitch Sheep Projects

As a knitter, I love a good sheep motif, so let’s take a look at some cute sheep cross stitch patterns. 

If you want to stitch a little sheep, this mini square from Good Dog Needleworks is a nice choice. It uses just three colors and measures 32 by 32 stitches. That’s 2.2 inches or about 5.5 cm square if you stitch it on 14 count fabric. 

I also love these two little sheep, which you can stitch together or in individual hoops and shown. The designs are form Threadbound Art and use six colors. They are slightly different in size, with one being 21 by 17 stitches and the other 21 by 20. They fit in four inch frames if you work them on 14 count fabric. 

You can stitch a sweet sheep bookmark with this design from Kits by SA Stitch. This is not for the person who doesn’t like back stitch, because there’s a lot of that here, but it is really cute. It measures 30 by 91 stitches and uses 10 colors. That will make your bookmark about 2.4 by 6.5 inches, or 6 by 16.5 cm on 14 count fabric. 

Stitch a pretty scene of sheep in a meadow with this design from Motok Nytok. It uses 21 colors and the design is 99 by 73 stitches. On 14 count fabric that makes it about 7.07 by 5.21 inches, or 17.96 by 13.24 cm. 

This yarn full of cross stitch sheep has a bit of a knitting twist because the sheep all look like they have sweaters on. The design is from Soda Stitch Design and it measures 179 by 216 stitches. The full design uses 27 colors. On 14 count fabric it will work out to 12.78 by 15.42 inches, or 32.48 by 39.19 cm. 

Another great one with a knitting theme is this one where the wool is coming off the sheep and straight onto the needles. This one is from Happy Cross Stitchers and uses 12 colors. The pattern is 137 by 137 stitches, which comes out to 9.7 inches or 24.86 cm square on 14 count fabric. This would be a fun one to stitch for the knitter in your life (even if that is you). 

Or you can stitch the field of sheep of a knitter’s dreams with the Happy Sheep chart from Charts and Stuff. These per-colored sheep can be stitched as shown or worked in any colors you like. The eyes are French knots but you can just stitch them in white if you’d rather.