Review: Enchanted Garden Cross Stitch

Crafting and gardening seem to go together, and a lot of designers use flowers in their designs because they also enjoy growing them.

Gail Bussi is a cross stitch designer and an avid gardener, and she combined her two loves for a collection of outdoors-inspired patterns called Enchanted Garden Cross-Stitch.

The book includes 20 patterns featuring flowers, bird, butterflies and other images from backyard gardens, complete with words or quotes related to gardens, flowers and the outdoors.

For example a couple of the designs feature quotes from the book The Secret Garden, another has a quote from Maya Angelou, while others have lines like “flowers are happy things” and “heart of a rose,” which is shown on a heart-shaped design of flowers and an arbor.

The patterns use a lot of different colors (the fewest colors used in a pattern I could find were 12 or 13) and there’s a lot of detail that makes these patterns best suited to stitchers with some experience. Each chart is shown on a single page regardless of the size of the design, which means some of them are much smaller than others. That could be a problem for those with vision issues.

Also some of the colors used in the charts make it harder to read them. A few of the charts are shown with green as the background color, which can make it harder to see the stitches that are also green around them, or even to read the words in the design.

If you can get past those issues (by copying the image larger and in black and white, for instance) these are pretty designs and things that would be nice to stitch for flower-loving friends or for yourself.

The book also includes a recipe for carrot cupcakes, tips on making herbal tea and other tidbits from the garden.

Enchanted Garden Cross-Stitch is a lovely book with sweet designs worth taking the time to get over the hurdles of their presentation for.

About the book: 114 pages, paperback, 20 designs. Published 2023 by Stackpole Books. Suggested retail price $26.95.

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30 + Bird Cross Stitch Patterns

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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