Ways to Display Your Cross Stitch Projects

I think most of the time when we make cross stitch projects, we are pretty conventional in how we choose to display them. We might mount them on a board of some sort, or show them in a frame.

Sometimes we might make special kinds of projects that are displayed or used in different ways, such as making cross stitch bookmarks, holiday ornaments or badges.

Or we might stitch onto fabric that isn’t meant to be for cross stitch at all, such as adding a monogram to a set of napkins or stitching a design or some words on an apron or something cute on a tea towel.

But there are more things you can do with cross stitch beyond this handful of options.

Craft with Cartwright has a list of 26 different ways you can display finished cross stitch projects, which are sure to get your imagination going.

I love this list as a way to think about making cross stitch gifts for people for the holidays or other occasions. It’s a reminder that we don’t have to make a big thing and frame it (though the one Christmas gift I’m working on is going to be framed).

We can make magnets or iron on patches for clothes (that’s one I hadn’t thought of before!). There are lots of different ways to make ornaments, from tiny frames to making a little stuffed pillow or pincushion style ornament.

You can make wall hangings, or gift tags, or even make your own frames if you want to frame your pieces for display.

There are so many great ideas in this list and I don’t want to give them all away, so head to Craft with Cartwright to check them all out. There are tutorials to all of the different projects and presentation ideas, so you’re sure to find something to spark a new project idea for you.

[Photo: Craft with Cartwright]

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35+ Sunflower Cross Stitch Patterns

To celebrate back to school season, I wanted to make a fun and useful cross stitch pattern, so I decided on this cross stitch pencil bookmark.

It’s a really easy pattern even though it calls for six colors. You definitely don’t have to use all the colors if you don’t want to, and you can use different colors to make a colored pencil instead of the traditional yellow one.

These sorts of projects always end up taking longer than I imagined they would in my head, because I just don’t stop to do the math of exactly how many stitches are in a piece that’s 23 stitches by 74 rows (1,702, though not every single one of them is covered, most of them are).

But because the coloring of the chart is so straightforward, I’d say it also doesn’t take as long as 1,700 stitches sounds, if that makes sense. Because you barely have to count anything and could make most of it without consulting the chart, you can get into a groove pretty easily and stitch whole sections in a single sitting. I had a lot of fun stitching this one and I think you will, too.

Once the stitching is done, take a piece of felt and sew it to the back to hide the mess you’ve made and make it a nice smooth bookmark that’s easy to use in whatever book you might be reading.

This is a fun one to make for yourself or a kid in your life who is going back to school. But it would also be a fun teacher appreciation gift or holiday gift, especially for an English teacher but really anyone would like this one I think.

You can grab the free chart and get all the instructions for assembling your own cross stitch pencil bookmark over at Our Daily Craft.

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