Seasoned Cross Stitchers: What Do You Wish You Knew Starting Out?

I love to hear about crafts from the perspective of people who’ve been at it for a while, because they often learn things they wish they knew when they were first learning how to do that particular craft that are useful for newbies (and those with more experience) to think about or try for themselves.

In this case we’ve got a post/podcast episode from Hannah Hand Makes about seven things she wishes she knew before she started cross stitching. It’s worth a read for the full list because there are definitely things on there I haven’t considered or tried before (not that I’m all that seasoned when it comes to cross stitching, but still).

One that I do want to make special note of is that she says she wishes she knew big projects aren’t as frustrating as she thought they would be.

She says that she never thought she had the patience for big projects and that she would get bored before they were done, but it helps her to have some smaller projects on the go at the same time so she doesn’t have to work a big project straight through.

That’s good advice. I generally am only working one cross stitch project at a time and I know that I do get bored and set it aside, even when it’s not that big of a project!

Another one that probably goes hand in hand with stitching larger projects is realizing there are lots of different ways to finish cross stitch projects rather than just putting them all in hoops to display. Hoops are really cute (and I actually just wrote about a couple of ways to finish hoops for framing cross stitch) but you can use regular frames, turn your projects into pillows and lots of other things depending on the size of the finished project.

Check out all her thoughts at Hannah Hand Makes. I’d love to hear what you wish you knew when you were newer to stitching than you are now!

[Photo: Hannah Hand Makes]

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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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