Cross-Stitch

Charts, patterns and everything needlepoint

Stitch a Sunny Rainbow for a Kid’s Room or Whatever

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cross stitch rainbowI love rainbow colored everything and cross-stitched rainbows are just extra super cute and irresistible.

They’re also great projects for kids and others who are learning to cross stitch because all the colors make it interesting but the pattern is still predictable.

Ann’s Cross Stitch Rainbow from Cross Stitch Pattern.net is a great little design to get you started. It uses 8 colors and is 70 stitches wide by 42 tall. It would be a great little wall hanging for a kid’s room (it comes out about 5 by 3 inches) or anywhere else that needs a little bit of a lot of color.

[Photo: Cross-Stitch-Pattern.net.]

Comments

  1. I’ve been away from cross stitching for a little while, but now I am back and looking at familiar sites and blogs. I am often disappointed, as I was when I went to Ann’s site. I was there since she started, and was delighted with all the wonderful free patterns she offered. Now I see that I must pay a monthly fee for her patterns.

    I don’t begrudge her the money, but would prefer a request for donations rather than pay a fee if I want a pattern that month or not. It’s too bad there are so few real freebie patterns anymore.

Have you read?

How to Cross Stitch a Table Cloth

Most of the cross stitch projects I make are pretty small and not something I would consider heirloom quality (though I am working on a big project for my daughter that I hope to have done for her high school graduation in two years that I hope is something she’ll want to keep forever, but that’s another story). 

But it is definitely possible to cross stitch projects that will stay around for generations, and one prime example of that is a cross-stitched linen tablecloth. 

Linen tablecloths are classic, while stitching one can be a big project, depending on the size of your table, it doesn’t have to be really complicated. 

Koekoek has a good, detailed post about figuring out how much linen you would need to make a tablecloth that you can cross stitch and/or embroider on (they also sell tablecloth linen in their shop if you don’t already have some or a linen tablecloth you already use). Of course for a project like this you’d want the best fabric you can find and afford, because you’ll be stitching it for a long time and hopefully using it for years. 

The post walks through how to measure your table and determine how much fabric you’ll need including the drop you’ll want and hems.  It includes the math for rectangular and square tables as well as circular tables, which helps take the guesswork out of buying fabric. It also talks about preparing the fabric and making mitered corners if you have a square or rectangular table, which will help the tablecloth sit nicely on your table.

The tutorial doesn’t include specific patterns to use for your tablecloth, but it does advise keeping it simple because this is a really big project. You can start with a motif in the center or doing borders, and this is a project you can add to through the years by, say, stitching a symbol for each family member or adding names, wedding dates, etc. and making it a real record of your family. 

Would you ever cross stitch a tablecloth or have you done so? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Koekoek]