Get Your Christmas Stitching Started with Christmas Greetings

I have been cleaning out my office recently and I found this little booklet from Leisure Arts, which seemed appropriate since it’s basically Christmas in July time.

Christmas Greetings has patterns for three different designs that could be used in a lot of different ways. There is a text greeting and a picture with each one, and they are designed to be finished in such a way that they look like open books.

It sounds a little daunting, but the book does provide a materials list and instructions for how such a thing is done (they’re made with adhesive mounting board, batting and cording, as well as ribbon for the “bookmark” and charms to decorate the “pages”).

The charts, designed by Carol Emmer, are lovely and this would be an interesting way to decorate for the holidays, or choose part of any chart to make a wall hanging, pillow or other decor.

Have you ever stitched a book like this? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo via Leisure Arts.]

Looking for more Christmas Cross Stitch patterns? Check these out on Etsy.

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Fourth of July Cross Stitch Patterns

To celebrate back to school season, I wanted to make a fun and useful cross stitch pattern, so I decided on this cross stitch pencil bookmark.

It’s a really easy pattern even though it calls for six colors. You definitely don’t have to use all the colors if you don’t want to, and you can use different colors to make a colored pencil instead of the traditional yellow one.

These sorts of projects always end up taking longer than I imagined they would in my head, because I just don’t stop to do the math of exactly how many stitches are in a piece that’s 23 stitches by 74 rows (1,702, though not every single one of them is covered, most of them are).

But because the coloring of the chart is so straightforward, I’d say it also doesn’t take as long as 1,700 stitches sounds, if that makes sense. Because you barely have to count anything and could make most of it without consulting the chart, you can get into a groove pretty easily and stitch whole sections in a single sitting. I had a lot of fun stitching this one and I think you will, too.

Once the stitching is done, take a piece of felt and sew it to the back to hide the mess you’ve made and make it a nice smooth bookmark that’s easy to use in whatever book you might be reading.

This is a fun one to make for yourself or a kid in your life who is going back to school. But it would also be a fun teacher appreciation gift or holiday gift, especially for an English teacher but really anyone would like this one I think.

You can grab the free chart and get all the instructions for assembling your own cross stitch pencil bookmark over at Our Daily Craft.

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