Tweety Bird

July 5, 2019September 7, 2019CraftyK Leave a comment

This card is for my brother’s wife. I was 10 when they got married and remember her love for Tweety Bird.

I remember my brother trying to teach me how to wrap gifts nicely (that lesson didn’t stick) and the gift he was wrapping were Tweety slippers. Those huge fluffy things where you put your foot into the “head”. It was a popular thing at the time, might still be.

Because of that memory (hoping she still likes Tweety) I found a small enough pattern to make for her card. I was able to stitch this on 14 count and it came to about under two inches wide and not even two inches high.

I am super proud of myself for taking photos both during the making of and before backstitching this pattern.

The small size gave me the flexibility to use one of my full page happy birthday embossing folders. I did find that this particular folder (purchased direct from China) wasn’t exactly the right size. I put the paper through, but then trimmed off the edges and then trimmed the card as well so the embossing ran side to side without a gap. Making this card just a little smaller than normal.

To cut out the yellow paper to size it for the card and cut out the hole for the stitching I used my Cricut. Had a small mishap at first where it decided to cut part of the board and paper really making it the wrong size, then tried again to get this one.

After that was done I ran it through my embosser to give some texture and say happy birthday. Using double sided tape I laid in the pattern so it looks like Tweety is swinging from the top of the hole. I made sure to leave a little extra space when measuring for the hole to make it almost like a window, watching someone swinging outside.

Stitching

Started: June 17th
Finished: June 21st

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Antique Storefront

June 21, 2019June 17, 2019CraftyK Leave a comment

I think this is the most detailed and challenging card of the year. The pattern calls for 14 count fabric making the design 5″x5″. To keep to my “standard” card size of 4×5.5 I needed to make the design smaller, so I went with 22 count fabric. Making this already detailed pattern even more daunting. The pattern is from an old issue of The Cross Stitcher, I’m not sure if it can be found anymore, but that’s where to start the search. They had a whole Victorian Village Afghan Series.

I used my more “aged” fabric that is kind of loose in a way. I had a few times while stitching, mostly during backstitching where a whole row would just rip out. Like it wasn’t really in there at all.

This pattern has a lot of backstitching to it. So I decided for the first time in my cross stitching life to do some of the backstitching as I went. I even took a picture before I started in on the bottom half. I thought it would be fun to finally show a work in progress or WIP in the cross stitching world. (I learn so many new things from the Cross Stitch Club Facebook group)

Once I got all the detail work done. I attempted at double checking it. There was so much I just hoped for the best. I tried to take some semi-detailed pictures of the stitching top and bottom. Tried using a different camera with a macro lens and was a little frustrated by how far away I still needed to be from the design to focus.

For the frame I picked out a wallpaper that has some pattern to it, but still kind of plain. I really kept trying different plaid patterns, but they all seemed too busy. I really wanted the cross stitch to stand out since it is so detailed and took a lot of hours to get done.

To cut the frame I got out the Cricut and measured pretty darn well. There are times when I leave no breathing room, but this one wasn’t too bad. There was even enough space on the sides for the wallpaper to be taped to the cardstock.

Stitching

Started: June 1st
Finished: June 16th

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Simple Cross

June 15, 2019June 5, 2019CraftyK Leave a comment

I’m not sure where to begin with this card. I made it for a second-cousin of mine. He’s been through a lot in his life and part of this cross stitch has a little extra meaning because of where the thread came from.

About 15 years ago my cousin and his family were in a terrible car accident. His wife died and one of his children was left with a brain injury. He’s recovered well beyond what was every expected for which we are all grateful.

It’s not easy to lose a parent. If I remember correctly he was about 6 years old. I know his mom loved cooking (which is why we have the family cookbook) and she cross stitched. At some point my mom ended up with her thread. It’s in a brown case, everything sorted out and each color braided onto the cards. To this day I cannot rebraid them if one becomes undone.

For this cross stitch I picked two colors from her collection. I went with blue, hoping it’s a color he likes. Blue is a pretty universal color. These two stood out, so going with “there’s a higher power” they must be what it should be.

The pattern is something I found online. I didn’t want anything too crazy and trying to search “cross cross stitch” doesn’t go so well, the internet doesn’t understand that I did mean to write cross twice.

The pattern had a circle element to it that I decided to leave off. I wanted to keep it simple, I liked the clean lines.

I used the Cricut to cut my frame. It took a few different papers to come to the plain grey. Again for the simplicity of it. I didn’t want to add any text, embossing or stamping. Just simple, especially because the thread in this case has more meaning than anything else.

Stitching

Started: May 30th
Finished: May 31st

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Happy Kitty

May 27, 2019May 13, 2019CraftyK Leave a comment

Hopefully you like cats. I do. I have 2 of them. My cousins have several cats among them as well. The cousin who is getting this card however had to give up his cats after finding out one of his kids is allergic. Yet the whole family still loves cats. They are all getting a cat card to at least have a non-allergy causing cat around. I cannot guarantee the card is free of cat hair either. I usually have one on my lap while attempting at stitching.

This pattern is part of a set from a quilt book. I tried to highlight the symbols and colors I would need, yet missed the pink. It’s not in the picture when I started, but I had to go find some pink for the ears by time I was done.

This was a pretty fast pattern to work on. It was the designing of the card that took a while.

I had no idea where to begin. I went through both paper drawers a couple of times before finding the blue geometric patterned paper from a book I bought last year.

The pattern was small enough to add some stamping with a birthday message. That paper was easy to find, I find myself using it a lot. It’s not white and has some character to it.

I used my Cricut to cut out the blue paper and ivory paper for stamping on. I have a corner rounder cutting thing I used to round the corners. I was lazy and didn’t design the box in Illustrator and the Cricut program doesn’t allow for rounded corners.

After stamping I decided since I had my clear embossing powder by me to emboss just the word birthday. A little got on the letters above, but not enough to change the effect I was going for.

For not having a clue how to start designing this card I think it came together really well. Bringing in the additional element of the stamp helps offset the smaller cross stitch design.

Stitching

Started: May 9th
Finished: May 11th

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Birthday Giraffe

May 13, 2019April 30, 2019CraftyK Leave a comment

When I asked my cousin’s wife what were some things he likes (I did prompt with animals) she came back with giraffe. I don’t think this is a typical animal that people love, but it is fitting as he is well over 6 feet tall.

I immediately thought of looking through my Precious Moments books for a giraffe pattern and found this one. For some reason I think of Precious Moments when I think of this cousin. No idea why. Still after drawing the pattern, working on the pattern, nothing comes to mind that screams we have some event together that would make me think of them.

I used my WinStitch program to recreate the giraffe and added Happy Birthday text using a built in font. After starting I realized I had placed the text way too far from the giraffe. Luckily the file was saved and I was able to move it over and reprint the pattern. I’m not good at winging it, otherwise I would have tried to remember how far over I wanted to move everything.

To finish this one off I used the interfacing fabric again to stabilize it. Then gave myself a little more breathing room while measuring the cutout for the frame. I cut the green paper using the Cricut. Then double sided tape to hold it all together.

I use double sided tape twice for these, once around the frame and line up the stitching in it, getting it as straight as I can. It is movable which is nice. Then I put tape around the edges of the cardstock. I carefully place the frame with the fabric adhered to it onto the cardstock base and keep it as smooth as possible to prevent wrinkles and bubbles. I was impressed this one laid out very nicely.

I did some trimming at the end to remove any white edges from showing. I think the blade is getting dull, had to run it a few times making the card smaller and smaller before it cut smoothly.

Stitching

Started: April 14th
Finished: April 20th

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Go Big Red!

May 5, 2019April 14, 2019CraftyK Leave a comment

I could make this exact card for just about anyone in my family. Almost everyone loves their football and the Huskers. It’s a Nebraska thing if you aren’t familiar.

In my attempt to keep each card unique, only one family member is getting the beloved Huskers stitched onto a card. This card is for my cousin (and my mom’s godson). He’s been living in Texas almost 2 decades now, but that doesn’t take his love of the Huskers away.

To bring a little Huskers to him, this is the ONE Husker card that I am making this year. I found the pattern years ago with a random image search. I’m pretty sure it’s not licensed so hopefully I won’t get in trouble for it.

This card was pretty simple overall. I used the Cricut to cut out the card, background, and red pieces. This card is a little larger at 5×7. The pieces were too crowded looking on the smaller card. I wanted to do frayed edges and mount with foam tape.

While Huskers are known for red, they are also known for the Blackshirts, which is why I chose the marbled black wallpaper as the background on this card. I didn’t have red paper like I would normally use, but did have some red construction paper. I went old school and used that instead of buying scrapbooking paper.

I used double sided tape to mount the wallpaper to the cardstock and the construction paper to the wallpaper. for the cross stitch I used foam tape to make it stand off the card a bit.

Stitching

Started: April 6th
Finished: April 7th

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Love, Laugh, WINE

May 3, 2019April 14, 2019CraftyK Leave a comment

I am not a wine person. I never even graduated past a Moscato. I learned a little about wine at one of my previous jobs where I helped lay out a Wine & Food newsletter. I was then told that Moscato is for starting out, however not really what a true wine connoisseur would drink.

My aunt however is quite in the know on wines and loves visiting new vineyards to try new varieties and such things. Seriously I know nothing about this. I have been told I don’t even sample wine correctly (you spit it out?!). So based on her love of wine I found this pattern at dailycrossstitch.com to make for her birthday card.

This cross stitch was not my first venture into stitching on 22 count or hardanger fabric. I did learn that I have been going about it all wrong. I have been torturing myself stitching multiple patterns on 22 count using two pieces of thread. It’s extremely difficult, creates uneven lumpy stitches, and is overall quite aggravating. This was my fourth attempt at stitching on this size fabric.

Since the beginning of the year I have joined a Cross Stitch Club Facebook group. In this group people as questions such as, “How many pieces of thread do you use on 22 count?” Guess what the overwhelming answer is: ONE. Seriously! I only ventured off of 14 count kits last year so that’s one reason for not knowing this extremely helpful tidbit of info. After painstakingly stitching out the word Laugh in “bold” 2 thread. I finally decided to try 1. Just to see what happened. Holy crap it actually made stitching go so much faster! And the stitches were actually even. You can see the difference in the photo above.

The next thing I decided to do on this pattern was to correctly stitch variegated thread. Again something I learned about by seeing various people ask in the Cross Stitch Club group. Of course the part of the variegation I was on wasn’t very varied (have fun saying that three times fast), it still worked out giving a little bit of depth to the wine bottle label, see the photo below.

Now that I have learned something new, that will make my life so much easier when I need to stitch on 22 count again.

Assembly of this card was pretty standard. I pulled out the Cricut to make the frame out of heavier purple glittery cardstock. The finished pattern was placed on interfacing fabric in an attempt to keep things from stretching and warping as I put it in the frame. I still don’t think I have perfected this as I can’t get things in straight and still need to pull and prod it, which is creating bubbles. Maybe I’ll figure that out by time this birthday card project is finished.

Stitching

Started: April 1st
Finished: April 6th

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H is for Heinrich

April 26, 2019April 14, 2019CraftyK Leave a comment

Remember the Lion for Liesel? This card is for her brother Heinrich.

These cards are a little different from my usual. I have a Precious Moments Alphabet book from the early 90s that has a cute image to go along with each letter. H is a “gender neutral” pattern with a hippo, the H is either in blue or pink depending on the sex of the person receiving it.

Unlike many of the cross stitches I have worked on so far this year, this one required something called backstitching. I like to call it outlining as this makes more sense to most people.

Backstitching is done when you need more details in your pattern. As you can see this cross stitch looks a bit funny without any lines around the edges and even on the inside of the patter to bring out the details. It’s very 2 dimensional and not very clear without the details added.

Once the backstitching was completed It was time to add the interfacing to the back in hopes of keeping everything straight.

I wanted to keep this card similar to Liesel’s and went with a blue paper for frame and blue glitter glue to finish it off. The blue paper I used is a bit on the thin side, almost like regular printer paper and less like a cardstock. It was from my collection of paper traditionally for scrapbooking. Because it was thinner and lighter I think that is why I had so much trouble with mounting anything well.

The cross stitch pulled up and to the right, not sure how it ended up stretch like that, but with the interfacing on it there’s not much to be done. I placed it in the frame as best I could and attempted to adhere it to the cardstock. This is when things really went wrong and the paper ended up bubbling creating the creases you see along the top and bottom corners on the right. These flaws make this a hand made project for sure.

Stitching

Started: March 22nd
Finished: March 31st

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Fight Back with Books

April 12, 2019March 24, 2019CraftyK Leave a comment

As I got older at family gatherings I would have an aunt come talk to me about books. Mostly of the Fantasy/Sci-Fi genre. At the time that was also of interest to me, now I tend towards other types of books. This particular aunt also works within the public library system. I’m not sure if she is a regular librarian because I feel that she does a lot more than help people find their next read.

After doing so many single color patterns lately it was nice to continue on this bright colors theme. Like the last card, books are the theme.

When I came across the Books pattern on Dailycrossstitch.com I thought it would be the perfect front to her birthday card.

This design is stitched on 18 count Aida. Even with measuring I cut this one really close to the edges. I thought I had enough space, but I was stitching right up to the taped edges. Trying not to sew the tape into it. After doing that I realized maybe for the next one I should make sure to leave plenty of breathing room.

The pattern was pretty easy to complete. The letters went really fast. Even on 18 count the card ended up being a 5×7. Width-wise it would have run to or even off the edges of my normal invitation sized cards. I was trying to keep the cards small it just hasn’t worked out that way for all of them.

For the frame, my original thought was to go dark. I picked out a few wallpaper pieces that I thought might work, but wasn’t happy with any of them. Then I started looking through my cardstock and found a blue one that made the stitching pop more than I expected. I went back to the wallpaper and found this green patterned paper that was funky and worked with the two thin green books in the picture.

The Cricut was how I cut the cardstock for the card and the frame around the cross stitch.

I also tried to stabilize the piece by using the interfacing fabric I learned about for the last card to see if I could keep this from stretching and bubbling so much. I think it may have worked since I had to try multiple times to line up the design where I wanted it within the opening.

I wasn’t able to do my normal pulling until it sort of fit, which is probably the cause of the bubbles. The “lite” interfacing fabric is still very flexible, I just can’t pull and tug on the fabric like I used to, which is a good thing.

Stitching

Started: March 10th
Finished: March 22nd

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Rocky Mountain High

March 11, 2019March 4, 2019CraftyK Leave a comment

It’s my sister’s birthday today. While really looking at the walls at my parent’s house I have noticed just how many cross stitches there are adorning the walls. Some of them my sister made. I know one for sure was for me.

Now it’s my turn many years later to make one for her. Mine is by far simpler as it is only one color and only a few inches high and wide, but it’s the thought that counts right?

My sister loves the mountains. For a time she was going to move to Colorado however that hasn’t happened. She’s in Texas now, which is a bit different climate and view wise. I thought this simple image of mountains would be nice for her. She also did oil painting for a few years and many of those were of mountains. Again mine is not really comparable with its simplicity.

I finished the stitching in just a few days and started on the next one. It was coming up with how to mount this to a card that stumped me for the longest time. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to create a frame or put the raw fabric on black paper, maybe grey.

The first step to deciding was to browse my wallpaper collection. I wanted something with texture which just doesn’t happen with standard cardstock. Even wallpaper can be disappointing at times, there were some marble looking patterns that were on the smoothest paper you can find.

The paper I finally settled on was the first one I pulled out. It reminds me of rock and looks like a close up of a real mountain (at least to me). I think it really helps the stitching to stand out, yet adds another level of texture to the card overall.

I used my handy Cricut to cut out the wallpaper frame. Amazingly I measured correctly and didn’t cut off any stitching. Once I had it cut I was so glad I had enough cloth left at the top to run the bottom row of stitching along the bottom border of the frame.

This card is simple yet stands out to me. It’s quite striking now that it’s complete.

Stitching

Started: February 25th
Finished: February 28th

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CraftyK's Projects

The place where I keep my crafting projects

Category Made with Cricut

Tweety Bird

Stitching

Antique Storefront

Stitching

Simple Cross

Stitching

Happy Kitty

Stitching

Birthday Giraffe

Stitching

Go Big Red!

Stitching

Love, Laugh, WINE

Stitching

H is for Heinrich

Stitching

Fight Back with Books

Stitching

Rocky Mountain High

Stitching