Mardi Gras Cross Stitch Patterns

If you’re from Louisiana or just love celebrating Mardi Gras/Carnival season, these Mardi Gras cross stitch patterns are for you.

First off has to be these good enough to eat Mardi Gras cupcakes. The design is from Laser Arts Designs and they don’t say exactly how many colors are in each piece but they range from 20 to 25 maximum. It measures 205 by 126 stitches, which comes out to 14.6 by 9 inches/37.2 by 22.9 cm on 14 count fabric, or 12.8 by 7.9 inches/32.5 by 20 cm on 16 count.

The fleur de lis is a classic symbol of Mardi Gras, even more so when it’s worked in purple, green and gold like this design from Manuels Hobby Barn. This pattern uses five colors and has a design area of 222 by 244 stitches. On 14 count fabric that comes to 15.9 by 17.4 inches, or 40.3 by 44.2 cm.

Speaking of fleur de lis, this Louisiana love cross stitch pattern is super sweet and includes the outline of the state and a fleur de lis. It’s worked in four colors, and the pattern listing says they used 12 count fabric (if you use 14 it will just be a little smaller). The listing doesn’t give the size but you can check it out at Emmas Art and Design Co.

Keep your books in the holiday spirit by stitching up a Mardi Gras bookmark. This one from Povitruly Handmade uses 16 count fabric and 7 colors. It comes out to 31 by 103 stitches and they suggest using a piece of cloth that’s 10 by 20 cm (that’s 4 by 8 inches) and the pattern includes finishing instructions for turning it into a bookmark.

This last one is really just an idea that you can use in lots of different ways for Mardi Gras and beyond. It’s a Mardi Gras bead border that comes from Silverberry DesignsFL, and while it’s shown in yellow, green and purple you could change the beads to any colors you like for other holidays or just to make a fun border on a different project. As shown it is 126 by 98 stitches, which covers 9 by 7 inches or 22.9 by 17.8 cm, but the pattern repeats regularly so you could make it smaller or larger as you need.

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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