Santa Cross Stitch Patterns

‘Tis the season for holiday crafting, and a classic Christmas cross stitch theme is cross stitched Santas. These sweet designs are great to use as home decor or give to a friend who collects Santa things.

The Enchanting Christmas design from Love Crafts is a fun take on a retro Santa decorating a funky Christmas tree. The pattern uses 13 colors and is rated easy. It’s a free download from Anchor.

Another version of Santa in a long cloak comes from Lucie Heaton. She has a set of four cards you can stitch with vintage Santas carrying gifts. Each is around 50 by 50 stitches and you can find them on Etsy.

Stitching Space has a sweet free Santa cross stitch pattern designed by Ksenia Voznesenskaya. Santa is holding a gift and there’s a lot of backstitching details to add depth. You could even use beads as the snowflakes falling around the scene. It uses 18 colors and three blends.

You can grab a cute Santa checking his list and/or a winking Santa from Craft and Fabric Links. These free patterns were originally published on ABC Cross Stitch Patterns.

Speaking of Santa checking his list, here’s another option in that style, where he’s getting expert advice from a reindeer. This one comes from Cross Stitching Goods on Etsy and measures 206 by 193 stitches. It uses 37 colors.

And if you envision Santa being busy in lots of different ways, you’ll love this design from Etsy seller Stitchrovia. Here Santa is busy decorating a tree, skiing, skating, wrapping presents, making a snowman and more. The full design is a lot of fun but you could also stitch individual Santas to use on greeting cards.

Gazette 94 has charts for six classic style Father Christmas cross stitch patterns. These would be great for making ornaments or cards, or you can stitch them and use them as gift tags that become part of the present.

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Book Review: Retro Christmas Cross Stitch

When you put all the time and energy you do into making a great cross stitch project, it’s worth taking the time to frame it in a way that will make it look its best.

Often for smaller designs we’ll choose to frame projects in a hoop, which is cute and a fine option, especially for seasonal projects you might want to change out through the year. Others will send their finished projects for professional framing, which is a great option for gifts and heirloom items that need to be preserved, but it can also be quite expensive.

Crewel Ghoul has a great tutorial for a way that you can easily frame your cross stitch projects at home with just a few supplies.

She uses adhesive mounting board (but you can use non-adhesive board if you have some one hand or you need a size that’s not available in an adhesive version) and a few other basic supplies to secure the sides and corners of the cross stitch fabric around the board before putting the design in the frame.

This requires a bit of hand sewing, but we’re cross stitchers so I’m sure we can handle that.

Framing your cross stitch like this gives it a little padding in the frame, which makes it look better than if it were just flat in a frame with no special finishing. It’s also a great idea to use a frame without glass or to leave the glass out of the frame so it doesn’t crush your stitches.

And though this is super secure it’s not 100 percent permanent if you decide you don’t want the project framed in that way any more. Or you can take it out of the frame and the edges are still all nicely finished so you can display it a different way without having to do anything else to it.

Check out the tutorial at Crewel Ghoul.

[Photo: Crewel Ghoul.]

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