These Cross-Stitched Home Items are Works of Art

Swedish designer Ulla-Stina Wikander gives old household objects amazing new life by covering them with cross stitch.

Items such as rolling pins, trays and teapots are transformed with cross-stitch fabrics she’s purchased over the years. She started covering household items with cross stitch in 2012 as a way to give both the stitching and the old household items a new life. She says it takes a couple of days to cover a small item like a telephone, but she also does larger installations that can take weeks.

Check out her Instagram feed for even more inspiration. I love the idea of using old cross-stitch projects that might be lingering in a closet somewhere in a fun way like this. What do you think?

[Photo by Ulla-Stina Wikander, via Instagram.]

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Using Counting Pins in Cross Stitch

One of the fun things about cross stitch is all the different surfaces you can stitch on. Of course regular cross stitch fabric is the most common, you can stitch on anything with holes (and even sometimes on things without holes, if you use water soluble cross stitch fabric.

An option that has become more popular with the widespread availability of laser cutting machines is wooden blanks, which are often cut in shape to be bookmarks, holiday ornaments or other simple shapes. They can be keychains, picture frames or necklaces.

(While not wooden I even have a stitchable journal that I cross-stitched on.)

Stitching on wood or heavy card stock isn’t the same as stitching with regular cross stitch fabric, so Craft with Cartwright wrote a post about how best to work with these wooden blanks.

The main thing to know is that you don’t need a sharp needle because the holes are drilled. She also has tips on how to manage your thread (she recommends one strand of embroidery floss folded in half) and finish your project if you need help with that.

Check out the post at Craft with Cartwright for tons of tips and ideas for working with wooden blanks.

Ready to try it out for yourself? You can get rectangular pieces your could mount to a journal yourself from Toms New Old Things.

Fiore Designs has square blanks that come in different sizes and colors for your crafting needs. I am putting some stamp shaped blanks from Lunari Woods on my wish list (they also have gift tags in different sizes and colors).

You can get stitchable keychains from Millions of Stitches, circles from Geniuses of Wood, baubles from Pip and Chip and Christmas ornament shapes from Happy Stitching Time to name just a few.

Have you ever stitched on a wooden blank? I’d love to hear any tips you have!

[Photo: Craft with Cartwright]

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