Mid-Century Style Cross Stitch Patterns

When I was looking for pattern for my recent post on retro style cross stitch patterns (which you should definitely check out if you missed it because there’s some cute stuff in there!), I came across Etsy seller Mid-Century Maude and decided I needed to do a whole post on these fun retro designs.

Maude focuses on 1950s-style home decor, from kitchy cross stitch to custom wooden signs for your beach house, lake house or cocktail space, and super cute and stylish retro-modern style travel and art posters.

But of course what we’re most interested in here is the cross stitch patterns. As of this writing Maude has more than 20, mostly involving animals like cats, dogs and birds. There are also fun designs for your retro cocktail bar/rumpus room, like this vintage cocktail sampler.

One of my favorites is the teapot pattern, which features three tea kettles in the perfect harvest gold, avocado green and rusty orange to evoke the mid-century era. Add in some atomic-era stars and you’ve got the perfect retro touch for your MCM kitchen or dining room.

Since we’re headed into the holiday season I also wanted to point out this super cute retro reindeer Christmas cross stitch pattern. As shown it was worked on 22 count fabric, so it fits in a 4-inch hoop, but you can use 14 or whatever count fabric you have handy and just know that it will make a corresponding larger design. It is 68 by 65 stitches and looks like about seven colors. It uses full stitches, 3/4 stitches and back stitches.

Need to know about partial cross stitches? Here’s a guide to help you out, with a great little chart showing all the options.

Check out all of Mid-Century Maude’s cross stitch designs and other goodies, and let me know what your favorite is.

Next Pattern:

35+ Sunflower Cross Stitch Patterns

Lately I have been feeling like all of my clothes are looking a little worn or feeling a little tired. I don’t want to buy new clothes, though, so there’s been a lot of mending, altering and adding special touches to things that otherwise might get overlooked or not worn at all.

As an example, not too long ago I added a little bit of embroidery to a T-shirt, which was a lot of fun to do and made me start eyeing all my solid-colored garments and wondering how they might look with some stitching added.

Of course you can cross stitch on garments, too, whether T-shirts or woven tops, skirts, pants and more. But it can be tricky to transfer cross stitch designs to your garment to make stitching easier.

Much like with embroidery, it’s great to use a water soluble stabilizer to keep your fabric in place while you stitch and to transfer your design (or your cross stitch grid at least) while you’re stitching. Then you just wash away the stabilizer when you’re done and it will look like the stitching has always been there.

Ashley General Handmade uses Sulky Stick ‘n Stitch, which is a product I use, too. It’s easy to use and washes away cleanly.

To make it even easier, she designed some printable cross stitch grids at different counts that you can print out to draw your own cross stitch designs, but you can also print the grid right on the Sulky, so you can stitch on top of squares and then remove them when you’re done.

Brilliant, right?

She has pages as big as 8 count and all the way down to 20 (remember: the bigger the number the smaller the stitches will be) that you can download and print to make your own designs and also use to make stitching on clothing easier. I’m definitely going to try this the next time I want to cross stitch on fabric!

You can grab her printables over at Ashley General Handmade.

[Photo: Ashley General Handmade]

Next Pattern:

Have you read?