Cross Stitch the National Parks in Tiny Form

I love little cross stitch patterns, but it’s especially fun when a small cross stitch design has a lot of detail going on. That’s the case with this collection of national parks cross stitch patterns from Stitchin Madness.

This isn’t really a pattern, it’s a full-on book with designs for all 63 of the national parks in the United States (which includes the Virgin Islands). Each design is unique and shows a distinctive feature or the park or what the landscape there looks like.

The book includes a full table of contents and numbered pages to make it easy to find the design you want to make.

Each design is 40 by 40 stitches without the park name included, and 40 by 50 stitches if you add the name. They’re designed for 14 count fabric and if you make all of them you’ll use 72 colors, though each individual pattern uses a lot fewer colors than that.

These would be so fun to make as you visit different parks, or make the whole set to frame together if you’re a big travel person who loves the national parks. They’d also be fun as greeting cards or even ornaments for your tree with the year you visited added to it somewhere.

The photo above shows a nice collection of some of the patterns in hoops, but I could see them done in little frames as well. This should give you a taste for what the designs look like and might even include your favorite park (mine is Acadia because I went there on my honeymoon; it isn’t on here but you can see it on the product page.

If you’re ready to stitch the national parks, or even just a handful of them, check out this pattern book from Stitchin Madness on Etsy. I’d love to know which national park is your favorite or what you would stitch up first!

[Photo: Stitchin Madness]

I’ve done embroidery on paper before and it’s a lot of fun. You can use a needle to punch out a particular shape to stitch, or my favorite thing is to take a copy of an old photograph or a page from a magazine and add stitched details to the original picture.

One thing I haven’t tried but would also be fun to do is cross stitching on paper.

This is a technique that requires a fair amount of preparation because you need to find a pattern you can easily transfer and print it at actual size, then use the pattern itself to help you decide where to put the holes in your paper. And then after all that you can do your stitching.

It’s a pretty straightforward process, but Crewel Ghoul has a great tutorial that walks you through how to do it step by step. It even includes a sample pattern you can print out and try for practice.

The post also has tips for starting and finishing your threads so that the back looks as neat as it can, if that’s something that’s important to you. (When I have done embroidery on paper I usually just tape the thread end to the back. If the back were going to show I’d probably just cover it with more paper.)

Stitching on paper is a fun way to make bookmarks or greeting cards, but you also need to make sure your paper is thick enough to support the holes you’ll be making in it. This post has a good rundown of materials you’ll need and what kind of paper is best. She used watercolor paper but I’ve used card stock and scrapbook paper that was a little thicker than the average printer paper.

You can always test a little on the paper you’re considering to make sure it will stand up to the project.

Check out the post, which includes a video, over at Crewel Ghoul for more tips for cross stitching on paper. Is this something you’ve tried before? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Crewel Ghoul]

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