How to Cross Stitch Your Family

At my daughter’s school there’s a teacher who is amazing at cross stitch, and she loves making cross-stitch family portraits. They’re always so cute, and a fun way to add some personality to your walls that’s completely personalized and a little more special than a picture.

While it can be time consuming to figure out exactly how to stitch a family portrait, it’s not really that hard to cross stitch your family.

Martha Stewart has a quick overview, which I like for the advice on head sizes (10 stitches across for adults, 9 for kids, even smaller for babies).

But if you really want some good instructions on how to cross stitch your family portrait yourself, head over to Do Small Things with Love. She has a tutorial that shows how she turned a picture into cross stitch, and did another a year later that shows a different look. She has little sample people you can use as the basis for your design, or just go on your own with some graph paper to turn a picture into an adorable cross-stitched portrait.

Have you ever done this? I think it looks like a lot of fun and I’d really like to try it some day. If you have, I’d love to hear your tips!

[Photo via Do Small Things with Love.]

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31+ Cross Stitch Ideas For Teacher Appreciation Gifts

The designs from Bella Rose Craft look like they would be good for beginner cross stitchers and others who like relatively simple and small designs that are quick to finish for gifts or decor.

I’ll mention up front that this Etsy shop based in Indiana has no organization whatsoever. There are two categories: kits and patterns. So it’s a bit of a treasure hunt to find what you might be interested in.

As mentioned there are lots of minis and small looking projects with simple lines and minimal colors. There are holiday projects, animals, summer motifs like palm trees and beach umbrellas, a bathtub with a rubber duck, some text based designs (like hoppy spring and merry and bright), some biblical and religious designs, flowers, bunting and more.

On a site like this its difficult to pick something representative of the whole page, but I liked this bees and beehive design, so it’s the one I picked to share. This one illustrates a lot of my general points about the patterns from this shop. It’s small (2.79 by 2.57 inches, or about 7 by 6.5 cm on 14 count fabric), it looks like it’s all whole cross stitches and probably uses only six colors, and a couple of colors are only used for a handful of stitches.

Of the 300 plus cross stitch patterns available as of this writing, 140 are also available as cross stitch kits. These would be great to give as gifts if you’re trying to get someone interested in cross stitching. The kits include the pattern, fabric and floss, and you can choose to have it include a needle or not. The hoop is not included but the patterns explain what kind of hoop is shown if you want to get one to match.

So if you’re looking for cute, beginner friendly patterns for yourself or you’re trying to be a crafty enabler for someone else, check out Bella Rose Craft on Etsy.

[Photo: Bella Rose Craft]

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