Funny Jewish Cross Stitch Patterns

I was looking for some new Passover cross stitch patterns but I couldn’t find much I didn’t share in last year’s Passover cross stitch patterns post, but I did find some funny Jewish cross stitch patterns that would be fun to stitch any time of year.

This one is more whimsical than funny but it is super cute so I wanted to include it. This animal cross stitch alphabet from Mindy’s Cross Stitch shows the Hebrew alphabet shaped with different animals. This would be so cute to stitch up in whole for a child’s room, or just do the letters of their name or the family’s name or whatever other word you would like to spell out. The full design is 218 by 307 stitches, which comes out to 15.57 by 21.93 inches, or 39.55 by 55.7 cm on 14 count fabric.

If you’re super busy getting ready for the holiday, or, you know, Tuesday, you can probably relate to this design from Sew Perfectly Designed. The flowers are cross stitched while the words “functioning on caffeine and pure chutzpah” are worked in backstitch. It uses six colors and is 53 by 55 stitches. On 14 count fabric that comes to 3.79 by 3.93 inches, or about 9.5 by 10 cm.

The Kosher Stitcher has a lot of great snarky Jewish cross stitch patterns, but for this collection I chose this ode to ‘Shevitz, because maybe you need something to celebrate today? This one is 95 by 107 stitches and uses full stitches and back stitching. It uses 13 colors. On 14 count fabric it comes out to 6.8 by 7.6 inches, or 17.2 by 19.4 cm.

Another one the Kosher Stitcher has is “ain’t no challah back girl,” but that’s included in this set of Hanukkah (though a couple would work for other times of the year) cross stitch patterns from Whimsy Orchard so I include it here. I also love “this is how we Jew it,” which is appropriate for all seasons. They’re all roughly 71 by 94 stitches and to work the whole set you’ll need eight colors of thread.

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35+ Sunflower 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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