Cross-Stitch

Charts, patterns and everything needlepoint

Stitch Sweet Flower Magnets

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embroidered magnet tutorial

These projects were done with embroidery, but you could also make tiny magnets with wee little bits of cross stitch on them if you wanted. Say, a letter or a tiny stitched heart?

Cutesy Crafts has the tutorial for making these using a cover button tool, which is a clever idea and makes it easy to get the right size.

Her pattern that goes along with the tutorial shows six options for little flowers to stitch, but once you know the size of the button you’re working with you can easily draw or freehand your own designs.

These little magnets would be great gifts for teachers or really anyone else. They’re so sweet!

[Photo: Cutesy Crafts.]

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Designer Spotlight: TesLime Cross Stitch

If your cross stitch tastes run to anime, fantasy, Disney, gnomes and the like, you’ll want to check out TesLime Cross Stitch on Etsy. This Dublin-based Etsy shop boasts more than 1,000 cross stitch patterns, with a strong pop culture bent.

The largest category in the shop is Disney, and there’s a separate Disney princess category, so there’s nearly 300 Disney themed cross stitch patterns in all. Some of these are chibis but a lot of them are pretty direct copies of Disney characters. Do with that what you will.

There’s also a large fantasy section that’s heavy on Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, dragons, aliens and trolls. In the hero section you’ll find Star Wars, Harley Quinn and the Joker, the Avatar, and Marvel characters. And in anime, there’s lots of Pokemon, Attack on Titan and Ghibli-inspired designs, to name a few.

The thing that caught my eye in this shop wasn’t any of that, though. It was sardines.

There are actually several different patterns in this shop of cans of sardines. I don’t really know why, but they’re just so weird and silly that’s what I had to share. In particular this one, where the little fish are wearing little shirts. Why? Again, I don’t know, but it’s kind of cute, right?

This design is 100 by 130 stitches and uses 21 colors. It comes out to 7.14 by 9.29 inches, or 18.14 by 23.59 cm, when stitched on 14 count fabric (the pattern includes measurements for some other counts, too, if you want to make it smaller).

And all of that barely scratches the surface. There are more than 100 Christmas cross stitch patterns (these are heavy on Disney, too). A steampunk raven. A large collection of gnomes.

I think you’re just going to have to go check it out for yourself and see what strikes you. If you end up buying one of their patterns, I’d love to hear what you chose! Check them out at www.etsy.com/shop/TesLimeArt on Etsy.

[Photo: TesLime Cross Stitch]