Winter Word Art Cross Stitch Patterns

When the Christmas crafting is done, we don’t have to stop thinking about winter. In fact, the winter season has barely started in the Northern Hemisphere, so we’ve got plenty of time to stitch up projects celebrating winter and snow. These winter word art projects are easy and fun to stitch and give you something new to decorate with when the holiday stuff comes down.

As a lover of hand-knit winter things, this winter word cross stitch pattern from Non Stop Stitch on Etsy made me smile. All the letters are made out of or decorated with coats, scarves, hats and other winter gear. The design by Vitaliya Mishchuk measures 78 by 191 stitches and uses 17 colors or color blends. The intermediate pattern includes full and half stitches, backstitch and French knots.

Another fun project that doesn’t use totally traditional winter colors is Snow Means Winter from crossstitch.com. This 112 stitch square pattern was designed by Susan Saltzgiver and uses three colors and is rated easy.

This winter one is a little less wordy and a little closer to being a Christmas design, but I think it would be lovely to have in the house throughout the season. This one is from Historical Sampler on Etsy and features winter birds, trees and other symbols of the season around the word winter. It’s 18 centimeters (about 7 inches) square and the link is for the full kit that includes thread, fabric, the white frame for display and some other goodies.

As mentioned above, a big aspect of winter that a lot of people wish for (and others wish to avoid) is snow. If you’re in the let it snow camp, these next projects are for you. This one from X Cross Stitch features bold lettering and snowflakes and is 160 stitches square. It uses seven colors and if you visit the pattern on Etsy you’ll see lots of different color schemes, from blue to red to rainbow colors.

Faber Cross Stitch has a design with the same sentiment but a little less bold, with a simpler font and only using three colors. This one is 114 by 115 stitches and fits in a 9-inch hoop.

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20 Snow Globe Cross-Stitch Patterns

I have not done a lot of big cross stitch projects, but sometimes even with small projects it can be hard to decide exactly where to begin and how to work through the chart if you’re working with multiple colors. The general categories for the possible methods are known as cross country and parking.

Cross country means that you’re working one color at a time, moving around the chart (or the section of the chart you’re working on) until you’re done with that color. Parking means you’re working in a smaller section and doing all the colors in that area, “parking” the threads by leaving them attached to the canvas but out of the way while you finish each section.

Royal Rows is a specific way of parking named by Alison Royal, which is explored in detail on a post on Stitching Daily.

The idea is that you’re working one “tower” of stitches at a time (she uses a section of 10 stitches across by 20 down, but you can do whatever makes sense to you). You work all the stitches of a color at a time, starting at the top left and working your way down. When you’re done with a color you can park it where needed in the section below your current tower (known as the dungeon) or in the “east tower,” which is the section to the right.

There’s also a specific way of dealing with thread ends when you’re done with a color. This is a super simplified version (head to the blog post at Stitching Daily to get all the details) but the basic idea is that you’re working from left to right and top to bottom across the work, parking the threads in the next section when you’re done with them and systematically choosing which color to work with next.

The whole idea of parking is kind of overwhelming to me though I will admit that it makes a lot of sense. I guess I need to try it on a smallish big project and see how it goes. Do you use the parking method of cross stitch? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo via Stitching Daily]

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