Stitch Your Family with Help from Do-It-Yourself Stitch People

Last month I shared a post with different tips for cross-stitching your family from Do Small Things with Love. I’ve seen online that there’s a book all about making cross-stitch portraits, but I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet.

The book is called Do-It-Yourself Stitch People and it’s by Elizabeth Dabczynski-Bean. I came across a great review of it of Spot of Tea Designs, and it looks like a great choice for people who would like more guidance on how to make a perfect stitched portrait of their family.

She shows how she worked out her design on graph paper, transferred the basic lines to her cross-stitch fabric and stitched out the design. This looks like a great approach for a fully customized family portrait in thread.

Have you looked at this book or made a cross-stitched family portrait before? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo via Spot of Tea Designs.]

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How to Cross Stitch a Family Portrait

Amanda G Cross Stitch is the place to go if you love floral cross stitch patterns and projects with a scrapbooky feel. Almost all of her designs include flowers, and a lot of them are spring flowers, making her projects perfect to stitch in the springtime.

It’s hard to pick one to show but there are several designs that include flowers in teacups, like this one with irises in a teacup with, you guessed it, flowers on the side.

The design is 97 by 107 stitches, which comes out close to 8 by 8 inches, or around 20 cm, when using 14 count fabric or 28 count evenweave. The pattern uses 24 colors and includes full stitches, a few fractional stitches and backstitch. You could change up the color of the flowers on the cup if you want to match your decor or the color of actual teacups you own.

Another common design motif is what she calls her sketchbook series, which is the ones that look like scrapbook pages I mentioned at the top. It’s like stitching a page from someone’s nature journal as these designs include birds, flowers, butterflies and art supplies scattered about. They’d be great to stitch for the gardener or nature lover in your life.

In addition to these, there are a few Christmas designs including florals, doorways and robins; some blackwork patterns and a few wreath designs. And just because I love them I have to share this cute puffin cross stitch pattern, too. There are also a few patterns credited to Rebecca Gregory, who I assume from the content is Amanda’s daughter.

Check out all the fun and colorful (yes, mostly floral) designs at Amanda G Cross Stitch on Etsy.

Have a favorite cross stitch designer who hasn’t yet been in the spotlight? Let me know in the comments!

[Photo: Amanda G Cross Stitch]

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