Cross-Stitch

Charts, patterns and everything needlepoint

Stitch Up Some Birds with Birds of a Feather Booklet

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Birds of a Feather cross stitch booklet reviewI love the look of birds and gardens in cross-stitch, and the booklet Birds of a Feather from Leisure Arts and Herrshners combines both in a lovely way that is sure to inspire nature-loving stitchers.

The book includes the four small bird and flower panels seen on the cover, as well as Garden Path, a lovely design by Barbara Sestok featuring flowers, birds and butterflies; Elegant Cranes, a design of cranes in flight surrounded by lotus flowers and designed by Linda Bird; and In Everything, Give Thanks by Gail Bussi, which shows three sweet little birdhouses and their inhabitants.

While the bigger projects use a lot of colors and are rather complex, the little birds (also designed by Sestok) are a great project for a newer stitcher looking to try something that’s a little intricate but not too big to be overwhelming.

Have you seen this booklet? If so, I’d love to know what you think!

[Photo via Leisure Arts.]

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Cross Stitch Cards for All Occasions

I have never stitched a greeting card, but I kind of like the idea of it. It’s a card and a gift all in one, and hopefully one the recipient will hang onto for years to come. 

This collection of easy and colorful greeting card cross stitch patterns from Susan Bates (via Gathered) are a great place to start if you want to stitch your own greeting cards. 

These text-based designs cover a lot of card-sending events, such as:

  • get well soon
  • happy birthday
  • thank you
  • thinking of you
  • congratulations
  • anniversary
  • new home
  • good luck

The lettering is done in gradients and there are other details like hearts and stars, a house key and a gift, depending on the text. There are full cross stitches and back stitch on all of the cards, and they use 15 colors for the cross stitching and six for the back stitching (and just two colors are used for both, so it’s 19 colors total). 

The designs vary a bit in size but the biggest one is 52 by 67 stitches, which comes out to 3.75 by 4.75 inches or 9.5 by 12 cm when worked on 14 count fabric or 28 count evenweave. The text suggests beads are also used in the patterns but there’s no note of them in the key, so go wild and add some beads if you like. 

Designs are worked on a price of 6 by 8 inch/15 by 20 cm fabric and then mounted to a card with a colorful baking piece of card stock behind it. This is easy to assemble with whatever cardstock greeting cards you have on hand.

You can get the free charts as a PDF from Gathered. 

Have you ever stitched your own greeting cards? I’d love to hear about it, or let me know if these inspire you to try. 

[Photo: Susan Bates via Gathered]