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.

One of the easiest ways to make a cross stitch project more personal is to add text to it. Whether you’re adding the names of people getting married to a generic floral cross stitch design, birth information to a project on theme with the new baby’s room or just adding a word or phrase that’s meaningful to you, adding words to cross stitch projects make them that much more special.

But if you’re not working with a project that already has text built in, or you want to change the text that’s there, that can feel a little daunting.

Caterpillar Cross Stitch has a great guide to adding names and words (as well as numbers) to projects, which talks you through what to consider and how to actually go about adding text to a cross stitch project successfully.

You’ll need to think about what kind of font you want to use and if you’re using back stitched letters or larger filled letters, how much space you need and how the letters work together in the text you’re planning to make sure it’s readable.

Their post includes common pitfalls such as running out a space or ending up with text that’s off center and how to avoid them (spoiler: chart out your text before you stitch!).

The whole post is really helpful if you’ve never added lettering to a project before and don’t know where to start. I like to use block letters in back stitch when learning how to add text to cross stitch, but of course there are tons of lettering options. Check out this collection of cross stitch fonts if you want to see some different things you can try.

And head over to Caterpillar Cross Stitch to get more tips for how to successfully add lettering to your cross stitch projects. They also have their own alphabet and number charts you can buy to add text to your stitching.

Have you ever added text to a cross stitch project? I’d love to hear how it went!

[Photo: Caterpillar Cross Stitch]

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