Polar Bear Cross Stitch Patterns

Polar bears might not be an animal you associate with Christmas, but they are a great choice for winter decor that takes you beyond the holidays. These polar bear cross stitch patterns are so cute, and they’d be great as gifts for a winter-loving friend or to use in your own home.

Talking of cute, there’s this baby polar bear cross stitch pattern from Daily Cross Stitch. The fact that its standing on a broken piece of ice is a little grim, but you can leave that out if you want. As shown it is 80 by 80 stitches and looks like it uses six colors.

I also love this geometric polar bear design from tiny kiwi NZ on Etsy. It uses eight shades of blue and white thread to make the design, which measures 73 by 86 stitches, or 5.2 by 6.1 inches on 14 count fabric.

And then there are these cute polar animals from Lucy Heaton, which features a polar bear, arctic fox, penguin and snowy owl. Each design is about 65 by 65 stitches, and you can stitch them all in their own little frames or make one big project with them. You can find the patterns on Etsy.

This pile of polar bears from Light Unicorn Designs on Etsy is sure to make you smile. It has a watercolor look to it that is produced by using lots of different colors of thread (the pattern doesn’t say how many, but says you can cut back if you think it’s too many, so that says a lot right there) so this isn’t a beginner pattern, but the results are well worth the effort.

Speaking of patterns that aren’t for beginners, there’s this stunning polar bears in scarves cross stitch pattern from The Cross Stitch Studio. I love their scarves so much; they look just like they’ve been knit with chevrons, diamonds and other colorwork designs. (As a knitter this really speaks to me.) This is one of those project of a lifetime type projects, measuring 700 by 560 stitches and using a whopping 90 colors. But wouldn’t you love to be able to say you made it?

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Hot Dog Cross Stitch Patterns

I have never stitched a greeting card, but I kind of like the idea of it. It’s a card and a gift all in one, and hopefully one the recipient will hang onto for years to come.

This collection of easy and colorful greeting card cross stitch patterns from Susan Bates (via Gathered) are a great place to start if you want to stitch your own greeting cards.

These text-based designs cover a lot of card-sending events, such as:

get well soon
happy birthday
thank you
thinking of you
congratulations
anniversary
new home
good luck

The lettering is done in gradients and there are other details like hearts and stars, a house key and a gift, depending on the text. There are full cross stitches and back stitch on all of the cards, and they use 15 colors for the cross stitching and six for the back stitching (and just two colors are used for both, so it’s 19 colors total).

The designs vary a bit in size but the biggest one is 52 by 67 stitches, which comes out to 3.75 by 4.75 inches or 9.5 by 12 cm when worked on 14 count fabric or 28 count evenweave. The text suggests beads are also used in the patterns but there’s no note of them in the key, so go wild and add some beads if you like.

Designs are worked on a price of 6 by 8 inch/15 by 20 cm fabric and then mounted to a card with a colorful baking piece of card stock behind it. This is easy to assemble with whatever cardstock greeting cards you have on hand.

You can get the free charts as a PDF from Gathered.

Have you ever stitched your own greeting cards? I’d love to hear about it, or let me know if these inspire you to try.

[Photo: Susan Bates via Gathered]

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