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.

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35+ Sunflower Cross Stitch Patterns

When you put all the time and energy you do into making a great cross stitch project, it’s worth taking the time to frame it in a way that will make it look its best.

Often for smaller designs we’ll choose to frame projects in a hoop, which is cute and a fine option, especially for seasonal projects you might want to change out through the year. Others will send their finished projects for professional framing, which is a great option for gifts and heirloom items that need to be preserved, but it can also be quite expensive.

Crewel Ghoul has a great tutorial for a way that you can easily frame your cross stitch projects at home with just a few supplies.

She uses adhesive mounting board (but you can use non-adhesive board if you have some one hand or you need a size that’s not available in an adhesive version) and a few other basic supplies to secure the sides and corners of the cross stitch fabric around the board before putting the design in the frame.

This requires a bit of hand sewing, but we’re cross stitchers so I’m sure we can handle that.

Framing your cross stitch like this gives it a little padding in the frame, which makes it look better than if it were just flat in a frame with no special finishing. It’s also a great idea to use a frame without glass or to leave the glass out of the frame so it doesn’t crush your stitches.

And though this is super secure it’s not 100 percent permanent if you decide you don’t want the project framed in that way any more. Or you can take it out of the frame and the edges are still all nicely finished so you can display it a different way without having to do anything else to it.

Check out the tutorial at Crewel Ghoul.

[Photo: Crewel Ghoul.]

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