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How to Cross Stitch a Family Portrait

May 13, 2023 by Sarah White

Making your family in stitching is a super cute way to decorate your house. You can frame the finished project and hang it by the door, make it into a pillow, photograph it and use it on your Christmas cards — there are so many fun ways to use it. And it’s a great way to document your family’s growth or preserve a time in your life.

But how do you cross stitch a family portrait?

You can work with an actual photograph as inspiration or just line up your family in your mind. This post from Martha Stewart covers the basics of how to draw out people. I love the tips here about the size of people’s heads! Also remember to consider the things that make a person look like themselves, which is often their hair, if they have glasses, and other distinguishing features.

While a cross stitch portrait can’t have a lot of details, making sure you hit the basics of a person will make it look more like them.

Catholic Sprouts has great tips on making your family in pixels, too, and you can use her patterns of her family as a basis for your own if you’re not sure where to start.

More Like Home has a video tutorial on stitching a family portrait if you’re more of a visual learner (note: she mentions her website in the video but when I click the link none of the photos show up and I get a security warning when I try to download her templates, so proceed with caution there).

If you need more help with how to cross stitch a family portrait, or make a stitched version of anyone you want, check out the book Pixl People, which has thousands of options for personalizing people, from body type and hairstyle to clothing and accessories like pets, plants and more than can be included in your designs. Stitch People has a great basic guide to designing people that might be a little less overwhelming in that it helps guide you through the process of selecting the details and producing your chart.

You can also get someone to make a custom chart for you to stitch from, like this one from Overflow Creative on Etsy.

[Photo: Catholic Sprouts.]

 

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Patriotic Cross Stitch Patterns

Summer is the time of patriotic holidays in the United States, so it’s a great time to stitch up some red, white and blue cross stitch projects for the Fourth of July or just for summer decor.

Curious Carrie Designs has this cute Americana pattern that would be great to have on display all summer long. It includes an American flag in a watering can full of flowers. The design measure 55 by 60 stitches, which comes out to 4 by 4.375 inches, or 10 by a little more than 11 cm, when worked on 14 count fabric. (The sample is shown on 32 count linen, which is more like 16.) It uses 16 colors.

This Fourth of July design from Lotus Lake Stitching is specific to the holiday, but it wouldn’t have to be if you didn’t stitch the words. The little buildings and fireworks are so cute, and I love that random red, white and blue bird. It uses nine colors and measures 247 by 83 stitches. That’s 17.3 by 5.9 inches, or about 44 by 15 cm on 14 count fabric.

The burlap colored fabric on this project from Needle Treasures Nook makes it look especially rustic, but it would have a different look with pure white or light blue fabric behind the stitches. This one uses nine colors and is 72 by 71 stitches, and was worked on tea-dyed 36 count linen fabric.

The Sub Rosa Design has this patriotic garden design full of geometric red, white and blue flowers. This is one of a series of their designs so if you like it you should check them all out. This one is 131 by 71 stitches and is about 7.8 by 4 inches/20 by 10 cm on 36 count linen.

Wombat Stitching offers this one that is fully Fourth of July (and a little Captain America for fun I guess). It uses nine colors and is 193 by 193 stitches. That comes out to about 13.8 inches or 35 cm square on 14 count fabric.

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