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…

The other day I shared some cross stitch patterns with ornaments on them, so this time around I wanted to share cross stitch patterns that you can use as ornaments. It would be fun to do a whole tree in your craft room with cross stitch ornaments, or just add a few to your tree or give them as gifts.

These little quilt inspired cross stitch patterns from Flamingo Toes look like ornaments and fit in 3-inch hoops, which are perfect for hanging on the tree or using to decorate a gift. I love the pastel colors on these but you can use more traditional Christmas colors if you like.

This cute Christmas tree from Lagodargetoshop uses a single color and fits in a 4-inch hoop, but you could make it smaller if you wanted by trimming the last ornaments and gifts from the sides, or just stitch the tree without any other embellishments. Either way it’s a cute addition to your holiday tree.

Stitched Modern has a super cute collection of retro Christmas ornament cross stitch patterns from designer Gera. This is a printed pattern that will be shipped to you. Each pattern is about 40 by 56 stitches, or 2.9 by 4 inches/7.4 by 10 cm on 14 count fabric. To work the whole set you’ll need 20 colors of floss.

These snowflake ornaments from Our Little Handmade Home are each about 2.5 inches/6.4 cm when stitched on 14 count fabric, and they use a single color of floss. They are pretty in red but you could also do white on a blue or black background, or whatever suits your other Christmas tree decorations!

From the description it sounds like this set of vintage style cross stitch characters is presented as one large chart, but the photo from Sampler Antique Stitch shows each of them stitched up as their own little ornament, so it gets included here. You’ll find Santa and snowmen in different poses in this cute collection.

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