Stitch Up a World of Rainbows

This time of year rainbows are often associated with Pride, but they can have lots of different meanings or just be a color combination that you like.

In honor of loving rainbows all year long, check out this cute set of rainbow cross stitch patterns from Faby Reilly.

The Rainbow World patterns were originally made during covid as a fun way to spread love while staying at home, but of course we still need that community, connection and bright light even though the time for staying at home has long passed.

The set is a collection of hoops with a heart design that shows part of the globe in a darker color, surrounded by a heart of leaves and a border with more hearts and squares.

The idea was to work one in each color of the rainbow and display them together, but of course you can just stitch up one in your favorite color if you don’t want the whole set. I think these would be really cute stitched up on display in a baby’s room with other rainbow accessories, especially if the baby is a rainbow baby.

Each pattern is 40 by 40 stitches, which comes out to 3 inches or 7.5 cm when stitched on 14 count fabric. They’re shown in 3-inch hoops but you could also use 4-inch hoops and have a little white space around the edge or even add in some text if you want.

If you’re working all of the colors you’ll need 21 colors, but each chart uses three colors. In addition to regular cross stitches they use a lazy daisy stitch and a Rhodes heart (the pattern has a little photo tutorial for each). Each hoop also uses 4 seed beads, so you’ll need 28 total if you’re making all of them.

The pattern is available in English and French as a free download from Faby Reilly.

[Photo: Faby Reilly]

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Cross Stitch Patterns to Celebrate Pride

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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