Cross-Stitch

Charts, patterns and everything needlepoint

Review: Enchanted Garden Cross Stitch

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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.

Have you read?

Toy Story Cross Stitch Patterns

I’m going to go ahead and admit that I totally missed Toy Story 4, so it took my by surprise when Toy Story 5 came out, but let’s celebrate with some Toy Story cross stitch patterns. 

This sweet design including Woody, Buzz and Jessie is from The Xstitch Shop, and they actually have a few different Toy Story options. This one says it is for intermediate stitches, probably because of the size and number of colors, but the sales page doesn’t say how big it is or how many colors it uses. It’s still cute, though!

If you’ve got a fan of Jessie in your household, this collection of Jessie themed icons is super cute to stitch. The design is from Mercury Stitches and it measures 97 by 144 stitches. that comes out to 6.9 by 10.3 inches, or 17.6 by 26.1 cm, and uses 11 colors. It has full and half cross stitches, as well as back stitching and French knots. 

Share the love of friendship with this sweet Woody and Buzz heart hands cross stitch pattern from Pixell Patterns. This design uses eight colors and is shown worked on 14 count fabric, but the notes don’t indicate how bit is is (based on a finished project photo, though, it looks pretty big). 

And for the Buzz Lightyear fans, of course we have to have a “To infinity and beyond” pattern, so here’s one from Silver Lake Stitches. This design is super cute on blue fabric, but use whatever you have. It measures 78 by 92 stitches, which comes out to 5.6 by 6.6 inches, or 14.2 by 16.7 cm, on 14 count fabric. It calls for 14 colors. 

Or if you want to go beyond the core three main character toys, check out this project from ThreeOOne Patterns, which includes our main toys as well as Bo Peep and her sheep, Bullseye the horse, the Slinky dog, Rex, Ham, the Potato Heads and an alien. The design is 310 by 80 stitches, which comes out to 21.14 by 3.5 inches, or 53.7 by 8.9 cm, when worked on 14 count fabric. It uses 65 colors. Or pick out your favorite characters to make a smaller project. 

All those characters and a few more are found on the mini Toy Story character sampler from Knotalot UK (only part of which is shown above). This one uses 31 colors and measures 134 by 108 stitches. It includes whole and fractional stitches, as well as back stitching. On 14 count fabric stitching the whole thing would make a project that’s 9.57 by 7.71 inches, or 24.31 by 19.59 cm.