Tag: crafts

Pattern Release – 3 Cross Stitch Patterns

Leave a comment

You may have seen me working on this Tri-Color Rose cross stitch:

A finished and framed cross-stitch of a flower with yellow, pink, and blue petals in a thick black square frame on a table with a green and white striped tablecloth.

And that I was making it several times over in order to figure out what number of stitches in each color would best balance the amount of threads versus retaining the most detail. I settled on version 3 which uses 75 colors, made sure there weren’t symbols that were too much alike in the same area, and it is now listed in my shop.

A finished and framed cross stitch of cascading hearts in rainbow colors in a thick black square frame laying on a wooden table.

While I was preparing to list the rose, I realized I didn’t have two other patterns listed here that I thought I did. The first is this rainbow hearts pattern, which comes in a bundle with the square and circle versions of the chart, both finishing at 4 x 4 inches on 14-count Aida.

A circular version of the rainbow cascading hearts pattern finished in a wooden embroidery hoop with a loop of orange thread at the top for a hanger.

And I wanted to offer this final chart as a little freebie that would make a great last-minute gift as it only uses 4 colors:

A cross stitch of a cartoon line drawing of two hands being held in a heart shape with a red heart outline in a thick black frame laying on a wooden table.

Using so few colors both makes it work up faster, and makes it easy to substitute colors for a unique gift. It’s charted as coming up to 5.3 x 5.2 inches on 14-count Aida, but this example is done on 22-count Aida and came up to 3.5 x 3.3 inches. If you want to change the Aida used for any of these patterns and figure out what size it will be, I would suggest this calculator from Thread-Bare.

If you do pick up any of these patterns, please tag me on Instagram (@caseykayb) because I would love to see your projects. My goal this next year is to release all the patterns I’ve had sitting in a “charts in progress” folder on my desktop for several years, hopefully one a month.

Follow me on Instagram and Ko-fi.

Yarn and Needles and Hooks, Oh My!

Leave a comment

I’ve been working away at a shawl for the past couple months, having to stop and rip it out about three different times before finally getting it going, but I’ve also got quite a few other projects cranked out in the same amount of time. First up were some washcloths.

My mom was wanting some washcloths for the kitchen at work, but couldn’t really find anything for a good price. Then I offered to make some to donate instead. Got one of those giant cones of cotton yarn off Amazon and set to work, carrying them with me everywhere in case I had a few minutes to work on them.

I think I ended up with over 10 by the end of the week.

Next up was a baby shower, which meant a baby hat and the booties to match. Baby stuff is so quick to make. If only everyone were so small.

Then came the current massive project: Flower barrettes.

The flowers are so quick and easy to make with leftover yarn, and I have a lot of leftover yarn.

Make three flowers, sew them on a barrette, and there you go.

You can find them on my Etsy shop because otherwise I might suffocate under them all.

Find me on Instagram, Etsy, and Twitter.

The Christmas Project Curse

Leave a comment

I swear, there has to be some sort of curse that falls on a project as soon as you decide it needs to be finished on or for Christmas. A project that would normally take a week ends up a taking four, or anything that can possibly go wrong will.

I was reading Cassy’s post about her husband’s sweater she wanted to finish on Christmas and all that had gone wrong and that made me think of all the projects I set out to create for Christmas. One of which is currently resting beside me, still on the needles, because two balls of yarn arrived a week after Christmas. But that’s a story for next week.

This Christmas I had to scrap one project, barely scraped two others together, and gave an IOU on the aforementioned one still on the needles. I only had one present ready a week in advance, and that was because it was one I was supposed to have made last year.

So, perhaps this year I won’t make it a goal to get any specific project done for Christmas. Maybe it’s best to just start projects with a goal to finish eventually, but not a goal to be Christmas presents.