Cross-Stitch

Charts, patterns and everything needlepoint

WhiMusical Stitcheries

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When I list my favorite Cross Stitch Designers (it’s not really supposed to be in caps, but that’s the way it is in my head because they are so important), Tracy Horner of Ink Circles is high on my list. I love her mandala designs, her fun western characters, and her smaller pieces. Recently she began a series based on musical clefs.

Tracy Horner Ink CirclesI was happy to notice that her latest – Alto Gether Now – is now available. The design joins Here Comes Treble and First Bass. Don’t you just love the names of the designs?

Tracy offers her designs through her Ink Circles site, but she gives you time to check your LNS (local needlecraft shop) first, so if you are like me and don’t have one (sob!) then check out your favorite online shop – I am partial to 123stitch because they offer the chart bundled with the floss you need – one handy click and I have all I need. Of course, I clicked on a few extra things too – like Tracy’s Four Seasonal Mandalas which is also new.

Tell us about your favorite designer(s) in the comments section.  I’d love to feature them here.

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Comments

  1. Brooke Nolan of Brooke’s Books. She is a wonderful artist with great designs. Her site has a generous selection of freebies too!

  2. It’s all your fault! LOL I just bought the musical patterns yesterday and I would have purchased the seasonal mandalas if I hadn’t run out of money. Now they’re at the top of my list of things to stitch (along with a couple hundred other things). Shame on you, shame on me. 🙂

  4. I love the musical patterns. I’m thinking that I can stitch them up and always hang them in the choir room at church if I can’t find a place at home. I to love Ink Circles. I just recently discovered Tracy’s designs when I finally found a sampler to do for my grandparent’s 50th anniversary (March 2013 – had to give myself plenty of time to work this 300 x 380 piece). I’m heading over to her site right now to get some new projects. You are dangerous Connie! lol

Have you read?

Make Your Cross Stitch into an Iron On Patch

A while back I made a little rainbow cross stitch pattern and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it, so I turned it into a patch. My idea was that it could be used on a jacket or backpack, or you could add a pin to the back and wear it temporarily on a shirt or elsewhere. 

But what if you want to make your design more permanent? Is it possible to turn a piece of cross stitch into an iron-on design?

It turns out yes, it is, and Sirious Stitches has done it so I didn’t have to try to figure it out on my own. 

The way they did it was by using HeatnBond, an iron-on adhesive that attaches fabrics without sewing. There was still sewing involved to finish the edges of the cross stitch fabric and make it look like a purchased patch. The post shows how to do this by hand or with your sewing machine. (I just did blanket stitch edging on mine, which doesn’t look like a “real” patch but is also a lot faster.)

Once you have the patch prepared it’s a pretty easy matter of using the fusible adhesive to the back of the patch so you can then iron it onto whatever jacket, pair of jeans, bag or whatever else you might want to add it to. 

I guess I’m a little paranoid about the washability of cross stitch projects, though you could hand wash anything with an iron-on cross stitch patch as you might need to with a purchased iron-on patch, anyway. But this does look really cool and is a great option if you know you want to permanently add a cross stitch patch to a garment of bag. 

Get the full tutorial over at Sirious Stitches. Would you add an iron-on cross stitch patch to something? I’d love to hear what you would use this technique for!

[Photo: Sirious Stitches]