Cross-Stitch

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Hold on to Summer a Little Longer with these Cool Flamingos

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flamingo cross stitch

I don’t know how you are feeling about summer right now, but as I write this things have cooled down a little bit where I live, enough to make it bearable to be outside. If summer could always be like, I’d like it to hang around.

If you’re wishing you could hold onto that summer feeling a little longer, check out these super cool flamingos from Diana Watters Handmade on esty. (She has another pattern with a single flamingo if that’s they way you fly; both are $5.41 to download.)

I’d love to see these cuties on the side of a beach bag or even in a fun pink bathroom. They will definitely keep you thinking pink.

[Photo: Diana Watters via etsy.]

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Make Your Cross Stitch into an Iron On Patch

A while back I made a little rainbow cross stitch pattern and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it, so I turned it into a patch. My idea was that it could be used on a jacket or backpack, or you could add a pin to the back and wear it temporarily on a shirt or elsewhere. 

But what if you want to make your design more permanent? Is it possible to turn a piece of cross stitch into an iron-on design?

It turns out yes, it is, and Sirious Stitches has done it so I didn’t have to try to figure it out on my own. 

The way they did it was by using HeatnBond, an iron-on adhesive that attaches fabrics without sewing. There was still sewing involved to finish the edges of the cross stitch fabric and make it look like a purchased patch. The post shows how to do this by hand or with your sewing machine. (I just did blanket stitch edging on mine, which doesn’t look like a “real” patch but is also a lot faster.)

Once you have the patch prepared it’s a pretty easy matter of using the fusible adhesive to the back of the patch so you can then iron it onto whatever jacket, pair of jeans, bag or whatever else you might want to add it to. 

I guess I’m a little paranoid about the washability of cross stitch projects, though you could hand wash anything with an iron-on cross stitch patch as you might need to with a purchased iron-on patch, anyway. But this does look really cool and is a great option if you know you want to permanently add a cross stitch patch to a garment of bag. 

Get the full tutorial over at Sirious Stitches. Would you add an iron-on cross stitch patch to something? I’d love to hear what you would use this technique for!

[Photo: Sirious Stitches]