How to Make Cross Stitch Ornament Blocks

There are so many fun different ways to display cross stitch. From making the smallest designs into magnets or pendants to framing in conventional frames or hoops, making into little pillows, ornaments and more, there are all sorts of ways to add your finished cross stitch designs to your home or to turn into gifts.

Sirious Stitches recently had a post about making cross stitch pieces into block ornaments that can stand up on their own, which is a good way to display cross stitch on a desk or bookshelf, and makes a fun way to present it as a gift.

They call this a block finish, but it also can be called cube finish or Styrofoam finish, since it uses a block of foam to attach the cross stitch to.

This is a great option if you want to display a piece temporarily, such as having a seasonal rotation of designs on your desk. It’s also lightweight, doesn’t take a lot of time to do, and it’s attached to the block with pins, not sewing (thus being easy to take apart when desired). You can also embellish the block in different ways to make it more seasonal or to match the theme of the cross stitch itself.

This isn’t a technique that I have used before but it looks pretty easy, especially if you already have a piece of foam on hand. And if you’re the sort to want to hoard packing materials, knowing that this technique exists will probably encourage you to hang onto that stuff a little longer and make cross stitch projects just for that purpose.

You can see the full tutorial with lots of great pictures to guide you along the way and lots of ideas for embellishing your project at Sirious Stitches.

[Photo: Sirious Stitches]

One of the easiest ways to make a cross stitch project more personal is to add text to it. Whether you’re adding the names of people getting married to a generic floral cross stitch design, birth information to a project on theme with the new baby’s room or just adding a word or phrase that’s meaningful to you, adding words to cross stitch projects make them that much more special.

But if you’re not working with a project that already has text built in, or you want to change the text that’s there, that can feel a little daunting.

Caterpillar Cross Stitch has a great guide to adding names and words (as well as numbers) to projects, which talks you through what to consider and how to actually go about adding text to a cross stitch project successfully.

You’ll need to think about what kind of font you want to use and if you’re using back stitched letters or larger filled letters, how much space you need and how the letters work together in the text you’re planning to make sure it’s readable.

Their post includes common pitfalls such as running out a space or ending up with text that’s off center and how to avoid them (spoiler: chart out your text before you stitch!).

The whole post is really helpful if you’ve never added lettering to a project before and don’t know where to start. I like to use block letters in back stitch when learning how to add text to cross stitch, but of course there are tons of lettering options. Check out this collection of cross stitch fonts if you want to see some different things you can try.

And head over to Caterpillar Cross Stitch to get more tips for how to successfully add lettering to your cross stitch projects. They also have their own alphabet and number charts you can buy to add text to your stitching.

Have you ever added text to a cross stitch project? I’d love to hear how it went!

[Photo: Caterpillar Cross Stitch]

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