Cross-Stitch

Charts, patterns and everything needlepoint

Great Deal on New Products

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Yesterday, Jen at Funk and Weber released a pattern, I Heart You Earrings. In addition to complete instructions for the earrings, she include images and suggestions for taking the pattern further, adding beads and gems, making a companion bracelet and a necklace. She also released Findings for Embroiderers, an e-book with instructions for using craft pliers, jump rings, eyepins, crimp beads, etc. with embroidery. Making the bracelets and necklace require some of these tools, materials, and skills. From now until Valentine’s Day, these two items are bundled together and on sale for just $4.00. Check out the great deal!

In addition, Jen also published a tutorial on her site for pinhead stitch which is useful in making the I Heart You Earrings. You may also find in useful for other projects. This pinhead stitch tutorial shows it in use with cross stitch.

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Looking for more Valentine’s Day Cross stitch patterns and charts? Check these out on Etsy.

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Cross Stitch Cards for All Occasions

I have never stitched a greeting card, but I kind of like the idea of it. It’s a card and a gift all in one, and hopefully one the recipient will hang onto for years to come. 

This collection of easy and colorful greeting card cross stitch patterns from Susan Bates (via Gathered) are a great place to start if you want to stitch your own greeting cards. 

These text-based designs cover a lot of card-sending events, such as:

  • get well soon
  • happy birthday
  • thank you
  • thinking of you
  • congratulations
  • anniversary
  • new home
  • good luck

The lettering is done in gradients and there are other details like hearts and stars, a house key and a gift, depending on the text. There are full cross stitches and back stitch on all of the cards, and they use 15 colors for the cross stitching and six for the back stitching (and just two colors are used for both, so it’s 19 colors total). 

The designs vary a bit in size but the biggest one is 52 by 67 stitches, which comes out to 3.75 by 4.75 inches or 9.5 by 12 cm when worked on 14 count fabric or 28 count evenweave. The text suggests beads are also used in the patterns but there’s no note of them in the key, so go wild and add some beads if you like. 

Designs are worked on a price of 6 by 8 inch/15 by 20 cm fabric and then mounted to a card with a colorful baking piece of card stock behind it. This is easy to assemble with whatever cardstock greeting cards you have on hand.

You can get the free charts as a PDF from Gathered. 

Have you ever stitched your own greeting cards? I’d love to hear about it, or let me know if these inspire you to try. 

[Photo: Susan Bates via Gathered]