Stitch Some Iconic Women for Women’s History Month

Women’s History Month is celebrated every March, but of course it’s always a good time to learn about amazing women from history and maybe make little versions of them in cross stitch. Because why not?

I shared a bunch of iconic ladies in cross stitch for Women’s History Month last year, and I wanted to try to find some more projects to share this year.

I love this little set of sort of chibi historical ladies from ThreeOOne Patterns on Etsy.

It includes 20 little figures, some of whom you definitely know and others might be less familiar to you. In fact the pattern listing doesn’t say who they all are so I’m not totally sure, but there’s definitely Mother Teresa, Amelia Earhart, Cleopatra, Sacajawea, Rosie the Riveter (OK, she’s not real, but still), Joan of Arc, Rosa Parks, Frida Kahlo, Wu Zeitan and one of the Brontes, I think, to name a few. There’s one that might be Josephine Baker? Maybe Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Hopefully each person is labelled in the pattern so you can know who you are stitching.

The full pattern is 196 by 308 stitches, which comes out to 14 by 22 inches or 35.5 by 55.8 cm if you use 14 count fabric. It uses 85 colors to stitch all of the ladies.

Of course you could just stitch a few of them or add one to a greeting card or another smaller project. I kind of like the idea of lining some of them up almost like a border on a project with a feminist quote or slogan. But having this whole set of amazing ladies on your wall would be sure to inspire you to greatness.

(And if you take a peek at the pattern and feel like you can identify more of the people, let me know. I think I know more of them than listed but I’m not totally sure.)

Grab the pattern from ThreeOOne Patterns.

[Photo: ThreeOOne Patterns]

I don’t usually cross stitch text or add words to my cross stitch projects. Sometimes I will sign things using basic block lettering worked in backstitch (luckily my initials are pretty easy to stitch), but if you give your cross stitch as a gift or otherwise want to personalize it, adding text is a great way to go.

But if a project didn’t already come with text, and you don’t want to draw your own, you’ll need a good cross stitch font that you can use for your project.

I like collecting fonts that are easy to read and to stitch and that would be good for lots of different uses.

For example I really like this bold alphabet font from Cross Stitch with Art, which has both capital and lowercase letters as well as numbers if you need them for dates or other information on your design. The capital letters are an inch/2.5 cm/14 stitches tall, which makes it easy to figure out how much space you need to leave for them. It’s a nice, basic, readable serif font you can use for lots of project.

If you want a script font that’s still really readable, check out Magic Calligraphy from Soft Pattern Designs. This hand drawn font has upper case letters around 28 stitches tall, with lower case letters mostly being around 20 stitches (though the ones that go up or down a lot like f, p and y are bigger). The numbers also vary a bit in size but range from 25 to 29 stitches.

Sometimes you just want a classic font that looks like sports lettering, and in that case you’re going to need Varsity, an all caps font from Stitch Mod. This one has letters that are 21 stitches tall, and it includes capital letters and numbers. But there are definitely times this one would come in handy!

Another sometimes useful and really cute font is this alphabet block letters alphabet from Stitch Junction. These letters are all upper case and look like classic building blocks, and there are also numbers available. This one would be perfect for a birth announcement project or some other cross stitch for the baby’s room.

And if that’s not enough for you, check out this post with 85 free cross stitch fonts for you to try!

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