Graduation Cross Stitch Patterns

I recently shared a review of a book full of graduation cross stitch patterns and noted that I haven’t shared a lot of graduation cross stitch patterns before. So let’s take a look at some in case you have a graduate this year.

Keep it simple with this personalized mortarboard and diploma design from Little Apple Stitchery. You can add the graduate’s name, school and the year of graduation, or put their name at the top and their school, major (if graduating from college) and year at the bottom. As shown the design is 119 by 119 stitches, which comes out to about 8.5 inches/21.5 cm square.

Favorite Gnome has a cute graduation gnome, and you could personalize the color of the gown and/or the balloons to the school colors of the graduate. As shown it uses 21 colors and comes out to 8 by 7 inches/18.5 by 17.1 cm on 14 count fabric, with a stitching area of 102 by 94 stitches.

This word art graduation cross stitch pattern from New England Artsncraft is available as a pattern only or a kit that includes floss, fabric and a needle as well as the instructions. (The pattern is printed and shipped, not a digital pattern.) The project is 9.6 by 9.1 inches, or 24.3 by 23.3 cm on 14 count fabric and uses two colors.

The design from Elchka Cross Stitch doesn’t have a place for personalization, but it’s still a nice project for someone graduating. It is 93 by 87 stitches, and it’s about 6.6 by 6.2 inches, or 16.9 by 15.8 cm.

Cross Stitch of the Sea offers this lovely design of a graduation cap sitting on a stack of books with flowers. It’s 150 by 135 stitches, which is 10.71 by 9.64 inches/27.21 by24.49 cm on 14 count fabric. It uses 40 colors but is all full cross stitches.

If you know a girl who is graduating, these last two might be for you. The Graduated pattern from PuntAGOpetitePattern shows the back of a graduate with long brown hair, but you can change the color of the gown and the hair as needed. If you want a custom color pattern written for you, you can contact the designer.

And Skylark Cross Stitch has this pretty design perfect for a girly girl graduating in her heels. It uses 25 colors and four blends and has full and half cross stitches, back stitch and small back stitch, but if you’ve got the skills this is a beautiful one to make!

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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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