Tag Archives: needlepoint

Apr 19 2013

Favorite May Day Crafts

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Growing up we celebrated May Day, which is May 1st, and we put a lot of effort into our baskets we would create. If you don’t know what May Day is click here. Basically, it is where a person creates a little basket with flowers or candy inside and they put it on the door steps of their sweetie, ring the bell and run! If the person answering the door catches the basket giver, the give them a kiss and send them on their way. I think it is a cute tradition, even if you feel a little silly doing it.

Crafts:

 DLTK’s Crafts for Kids has a lot of cute May Day craft ideas to do with children

TLC also has a list of kid friendly craft ideas.

Martha Stewartmay day, of course, has a cute and easy take on a May Day Basket.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are a couple non-traditional crafts for May Day:

tiny_baskets_1_mediumThese are adorable knit baskets that would be perfect.The pattern is by Vicki Mikulak and can be found on Ravelry.

 

 

 

May Day

 

 

This is a cute and easy cross stitch basket pattern for May Day.

 

 

 

 

Here are a couple of options if you’d like to buy instead of create:

may day

 

The Etsy store Heartmade Treasures is selling this beautiful and traditional May Day Basket.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

il_570xN.372182922_sebw

 

 

 

The Etsy Store ElsieAStyle has this elegant basket for sale.

 

 

 

may day

 

 

This basket sold at Amazon would be a cute May Day Basket, just add flowers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jan 31 2013
cross stitch heart

Cross Stitch Heart Pattern

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Cross Stitch Heart

I was thinking about Valentine’s Day and realized I didn’t have a cross stitch heart pattern. I wanted it to be like something I use to draw in junior high, you know, the heart with my love’s and I’s initials in it. Then I thought about Rusty and how he is part of this family, so I put half a paw peeking out over the top of the heart.

cross stitch heart

Pattern

 

 

 

The pattern didn’t turn out the greatest when I scanned it because I pretty much beat it to death while I was completing the stitching, taking it everywhere with me. Next time I’ll scan it before I start the stitching. Lesson learned.

 

 

 

 

 

cross stitch heart

Stitching the paw print was a pain in my rear. Even though I had my pattern the squares are so tiny that it would have benefited me and the pattern to make it a bit bigger if I want to stitch this heart again.

 

I really need graph paper with smaller squares so I can make bigger patterns. This tiny heart reminds me of a Pound Puppy patch! I don’t know what I’ll do with it now that the stitching is complete, maybe I will put it on a stuffed animal and then watch the Pound Puppies.

Dec 10 2012

Chevron Cross Stitch Case Iphone 4 Pattern

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I ordered a cross stitch cover from ThinkGeek! I am so excited to have a chevron cross stitched phone case. The case actually came with three colors of thread, needle and some patterns and the company has more case patterns at Leese Design. Just go to the bottom right of the page and click the red “chart” box. There are a lot of patterns to choose from but most were of certain themes/holidays and I wanted something to that didn’t look out of place throughout the year. I decided to create a chevron stripe pattern because I’m kind of obsessed with them at the moment. I didn’t know which way I wanted the stripes to go so I found some blank graph paper at Better Cross Stitch Patterns website, and started coloring. These are the two I made.

 

chevron cross stitch iphone horizontalvertical chevron cross stitch

Black and white versions

b&w horizontalvertical black and white

I don’t have the little camera hole in the upper left corner on the patterns because I figured it’d be pretty simple to omit it. Now I need to decide which pattern to use!

 

Nov 26 2012
rock climbing

Rock Climbing Cross Stitch

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Over the weekend I cross stitched Joshua’s rock climbing ornament. I made a few adjustments to the rock climbing man/pattern. Here is my rock climbing cross stitch.

rock climbing cross stitch

naked rock climbing man?

I asked Joshua what color he wanted his rope and belt to be, and his response was “I want to rock climb naked” :/ So the little guy is naked and without equipment.  I guess that means he’s bouldering and not rock climbing.

with background

background done

At this point it looks like a “It’s a Boy!” announcement to me.

I put a border to help curb that look.

with border

One last step, I backstitched around the rock climbing man the same color as the border.

rock climbing cross stitch

finished

Joshua’s guy is complete! Well, the stitching part anyways.

 

 

Nov 23 2012
background complete

Paw Print, How to Cross Stitch

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After I drew my paw print pattern I got to stitching! Here’s how to cross stitch. First I’ll go a little backwards with photos of doing the cross stitch with a border I’m putting around it. But a starting note, remember, is that there is no knot at the end of the thread, you simply leave about an inch on the back side of the fabric.

step 1

take the needle through to the front side of the canvas from the bottom hole

step 2

pull through and go to the next row over, up and to the right diagonally, pull needle all the way through to the back of the canvas

step 3

next go to the hole directly underneath the hole in the previous step and pull the needle through to the right side of the fabric

step 4

after you’ve done another diagonal stitch, go to the hole underneath the one previously used and pull needle through to the right side of the fabric

step 5

now go up and diagonal to the left

step 5

now go up and diagonal to the left

step 6

the first X is complete and now repeat

step 7

go diagonal again to complete the second X

In my pattern I have a lot of half squares which could be confusing. But really it either means a half of stitch, literally a half of a stitch where the needle goes through the center of the square making the diagonal half of it’s usual length.

with green

Pattern Complete

This is the pattern complete! But I needed a way to finish it, make it actually look complete. So I decided to make a border around it.

green

It still quite wasn’t what I hoped so I added another border.

red and green

almost complete

That looks much better to me, so now I’m going to fill it in with a cream colored thread to leave no square unstitched.

background complete

background is filled in

To finish the stitching part of this I decided to backstitch around the paw print to highlight it. This is easier, I think, than back stitching in sewing because it has the holes to put your needles in to make your stitches the same length and it is often used as a finishing stitch in cross stitch.

Stitching is Finished!

I put a pencil next to it to give a size reference. Now I need to figure out how to turn this into an ornament.

Nov 21 2012

More Cross Stitch Patterns

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I’ve drawn more cross stitch patterns! I’ve gotten the pattern making bug! But thank goodness for pencils and erasers because I used them a lot! 🙂

I made more patterns because I made Rusty a cross stitch pattern, which will be turned into an ornament that I decided my husband and I needed one too. Granted they are very basic, beginner cross stitch patterns, but they are my first group of patterns I’ve ever drawn. I can’t really draw that well to begin with but I wanted to try.

I have decided not to do a color legend for these because I wanted to keep my options open, as in, I wanted to make sure I had enough thread in my thread mess ball.

needle cross stitch pattern

my pattern

I couldn’t decide what to make for Joshua, my husband, so I sketched a couple of his hobbies and let him choose which one I made.

running shoe cross stitch pattern

running shoe

climber cross stitch pattern

mountain climber

snowboard and goggles cross stitch pattern

snowboard and goggles

He picked the mountain climber so now I have two more ornaments to stitch and make into ornaments! Still deciding on whether or not to backstitch the year onto it.

Graph paper really is a girls best friend when trying to draw cross stitch patterns.