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The Rainbow World patterns were originally made during covid as a fun way to spread love while staying at home, but of course we still need that community, connection and bright light even though the time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

I’m going to go ahead and admit that I totally missed Toy Story 4, so it took my by surprise when Toy Story 5 came out, but let’s celebrate with some Toy Story cross stitch patterns.

This sweet design including Woody, Buzz and Jessie is from The Xstitch Shop, and they actually have a few different Toy Story options. This one says it is for intermediate stitches, probably because of the size and number of colors, but the sales page doesn’t say how big it is or how many colors it uses. It’s still cute, though!

If you’ve got a fan of Jessie in your household, this collection of Jessie themed icons is super cute to stitch. The design is from Mercury Stitches and it measures 97 by 144 stitches. that comes out to 6.9 by 10.3 inches, or 17.6 by 26.1 cm, and uses 11 colors. It has full and half cross stitches, as well as back stitching and French knots.

Share the love of friendship with this sweet Woody and Buzz heart hands cross stitch pattern from Pixell Patterns. This design uses eight colors and is shown worked on 14 count fabric, but the notes don’t indicate how bit is is (based on a finished project photo, though, it looks pretty big).

And for the Buzz Lightyear fans, of course we have to have a “To infinity and beyond” pattern, so here’s one from Silver Lake Stitches. This design is super cute on blue fabric, but use whatever you have. It measures 78 by 92 stitches, which comes out to 5.6 by 6.6 inches, or 14.2 by 16.7 cm, on 14 count fabric. It calls for 14 colors.

Or if you want to go beyond the core three main character toys, check out this project from ThreeOOne Patterns, which includes our main toys as well as Bo Peep and her sheep, Bullseye the horse, the Slinky dog, Rex, Ham, the Potato Heads and an alien. The design is 310 by 80 stitches, which comes out to 21.14 by 3.5 inches, or 53.7 by 8.9 cm, when worked on 14 count fabric. It uses 65 colors. Or pick out your favorite characters to make a smaller project.

All those characters and a few more are found on the mini Toy Story character sampler from Knotalot UK (only part of which is shown above). This one uses 31 colors and measures 134 by 108 stitches. It includes whole and fractional stitches, as well as back stitching. On 14 count fabric stitching the whole thing would make a project that’s 9.57 by 7.71 inches, or 24.31 by 19.59 cm.

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