Cross-Stitch

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Cross Stitch Patterns to Celebrate the Year of the Rooster

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Chinese New Year year of the rooster cross stitch

The Chinese New Year is upon us, and the coming year is the year of the rooster.

 

I went on the hunt for free Chinese rooster cross stitch patterns, but the only things I found were on a Russian site that I don’t think pays much attention to copyright, so I didn’t want to share them.

I did find a few cool things on etsy, so if you’re willing to pay a few bucks to bring a little good luck into your home, check them out:

ScarletPyjamas has a lovely red rooster pattern inspired by a papercut rooster ($4.52).

There’s a golden rooster at Black Phoebe Designs ($5).

And HollysHobbiesUK has Chinese zodiac symbol cross stitch patterns, including this one for the Year of the Rooster ($2.57, or $15.49 for the set of 12).

That last site says that roosters are “punctual, bright, communicative, ambitious, capable and warm-hearted.” Sounds good to me.

Happy new year!

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Have you read?

Make Your Cross Stitch into an Iron On Patch

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]