Review: 50 Cross Stitch Quickies Christmas

If you love little bitty Christmas cross-stitch patterns, you’re sure to enjoy 50 Cross Stitch Quickies Christmas, a booklet from Leisure Arts by Plaid Bucilla. (Note: as of this writing I am not finding the booklet on the Leisure Arts site, though it has been published. Check Amazon, Barnes & Noble or your local big-box craft store if you have one.)

It includes a nice range of motifs such as angels, candy canes, Santas, pet motifs, other animals, religious symbols and sentiments, presents, ornaments, penguins and more.

Projects are shown in a finished form as well as the stitch chart, and most are around 2 inches square when stitched, which makes them great for attaching to gift tags, holiday cards and other little items. You could stack a couple designs on a bookmark or just frame them in a hoop.

The book includes general instructions on chart reading and basic stitching, as well as tips for framing, making gift tags, mounting on a greeting card or turning them into ornaments, which are all great ideas.

If you’re new to holiday stitching or just want a nice reference with a bunch of different patterns to choose from, this is a great book.

About the book: 32 pages, paperback, 50 charts. Published by Leisure Arts, November 2016. Retail price $9.99.

Looking for more Christmas Cross Stitch patterns? Check these out on Etsy.

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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