Review: Cross-Stitch to Calm

Cross stitch is a calming activity, especially when the pattern you’re working is simple and suits your personal style. Leah Lintz says she likes to cross stitch as a means of stress relief, but a lot of the cutesy patterns that are out there just didn’t suit her style.

So she designed her own projects and has published a bunch of them in the book Cross-Stitch to Calm: Stitch and Destress with 40 Simple Patterns.

If you’re new to cross stitch, there’s a little bit of an introduction here that covers basic supplies, reading charts and getting started, stitching different kinds of stitches in different directions and an easy way to finish off projects.

The patterns are arranged into categories: creatures, nature (which would be more accurately called plants), symbols and words.

A lot of the patterns involve leaving stripes of fabric unstitched in the middle of the pattern, which makes them even faster to stitch. For example, the star on the cover is striped with red and blue, but the white stripes are just the fabric showing through. This same technique is used to stripe an elephant, giraffe, cat and cherries, to name just a few patterns where it is used.

Most of the projects only use one or two colors (in fact it looks like there are two patterns that use three colors, and one each that uses four or five) so they’re great for beginners. The charts are large and each project is also shown stitched.

There’s a pretty wide range of patterns, from a butterfly to a bonsai tree, ice cream cone to anchors. The words eat, family, home and smile are charted, and I will admit to giggling when I saw that the chart for home had the word separated onto two lines, but you can always work it all in one line if you’d rather.

This collection might be one you want to flip through before you decide to buy the book to make sure the patterns are your style, but there are a lot of fun options for a new cross stitcher to try.

About the book: 112 pages, paperback, 40 patterns. Published in 2016 by Interweave Press. Suggested retail price $18.99

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Cross-Stich For Stress Relief - Unwinding And…

I recently wrote a post on my blog about using a stitchable journal cover and I mentioned that you can make your own stitched cover for a journal by using perforated paper instead of buying a stitchable notebook.

I have to admit, though, that I’ve never used perforated paper for cross stitch myself. I definitely want to because I think it would be great to use for bookmarks that don’t fray and have a little more stability, for example.

Sirious Stitches has us covered, though, because they did a deep dive into all things perforated cross stitch pattern that is worth the time to read through.

The post mentions that a lot of people use perforated paper for cross stitch because they buy an ornament kit that uses it. I’ve never seen these (or at least never noticed that that is what they were) but it’s a great idea to make small projects like ornaments in this way. It also talks about the pros and cons of using cross stitch paper, where to buy it and how to make your own.

Making it yourself is an awesome idea because if you already have a pattern in mind you can just make holes in your paper where you need stitches to be and leave the rest solid. This would be ideal for making greeting cards, for example.

In addition to kits and sheets you can often find the paper pre-cut into different shapes you can use to make your own designs, no real pattern required.

The post also includes tips and advice for how to stitch on perforated paper that you’ll want to check out before you try your first project.

I’m super intrigued by the idea of using perforated paper for cross stitch and will probably be trying it out soon. Have you used it before? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Check out the post over at Sirious Stitches for more information.

[Photo: Sirious Stitches]

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