Tag: embroidery

Pattern Release – 3 Cross Stitch Patterns

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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.

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You’re A Wizard, Harry

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Friday was favorite character day at the elementary school. Predictably, most of the people who dressed up were from the Harry Potter universe. You know, since it’s an elementary school and they weren’t allowed to dress as movie characters.

It started with a scarf, which actually came together rather quickly. I used red worsted weight yarn and yellow bulky weight yarn and was able to create a five foot long scarf with about 4 hours of work off and on Monday and Tuesday.

Then it was time to make the robe. I dyed some muslin black (that one took a couple different tries) and drafted the pattern on Wednesday so I would be able to sew it up on Thursday.

I then went and picked up some sunglasses to remove the lenses from. I wish I had remembered to take a before picture, because they started out bright, sparkly pink. But after a bit of sanding and paint they were much better.

Once everything else was together, I thought it could use one last touch, so I took some extra material from the robe, sketched out the Gryiffindor house crest with a white pencil, and embroidered it.

On the other side, I put a pocket. Not really a stylistic choice, but because part of the robe got eaten slightly by the serger.

Na Na Na Na Na Na Bat-Hat!

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I was asked for a Batman hat sometime last winter, but never really got around to making it since it was requested as a sun hat. Luckily the requester has a summer birthday:

I used some slightly stiff material that I don’t really know what it was and three strands of embroidery floss to create a patch to put on a sun hat found at Children’s Place. I created the bat first, then filled in the yellow around it to create the oval. I trimmed the excess material and closely blanket-stitched the patch into place. A nice, quick, gift idea that can be customized to the interests of the recipient.