Tag 18 count Aida

Husker keychain

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While visiting my mother-in-laws house, I noticed all the Husker stuff I’ve made over the years for her husband. Something else I noticed was now the coasters I made a few years ago are now out of date.

If you read my keychain project I did for people at work, I have several keychains left. This year I decided to make a Husker themed keychain, it may be little, but I think it will be appreciated and enjoyed.

Since it was so small, when the opportunity to make a glass Husker ‘N’ came up, I decided to make that too.

I also completely forgot to take photos before wrapping these. So the after present opening, I grabbed them to take a couple of photos.

Stitching

Started: November 11

Finished: November 12

Stitching time: 3 hours

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Travel theme keychains

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A request to write in a store bought card prompted this project. If you follow this page, you know I make a lot of cards. When I have to use a store bought card, it feels like cheating, even though I’m not the one who bought it.

I don’t know how official it is, but the company I work for celebrates customer service week the first week in October. The team I’m on was asked to write in some blank cards that will be distributed to the CSS team. While that’s nice, it’s not very personal. Even though what I’m doing is only personal in the sense that it’s handmade.

I knew I had several small travel themed patterns from World of Cross Stitch magazine. I went through all the copies I have and ended up picking 2 patterns that would fit the small keychain space.

To fit, the passports are stitched on 18 count and the globes on 16 count. I really struggled with placement and getting the patterns centered in the space. The fabric and thread are leftovers from previous projects. So the colors aren’t an exact match to the pattern, but it fits with the company’s drive for sustainability.

The backs are 4 parts of a photo I took while on vacation. There are 2 sets, I only took pictures of one because I finished so late.

I learned the keychains will be awards to CS reps who demonstrate over the top customer service.

Stitching

Started: September 19

Finished: October 1

Stitching time: 2.25 hours Passport (x4), 2 hours Globe (x4)

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Puppy in a stocking Christmas card

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The pattern calls this on “Puppy”, I went a bit more descriptive. This card is part of the 1988 series of Christmas cards that seemingly no one made until recently. I received this one stitched, but not assembled last year from someone and then received a brand new unopened kit. It’s cute so I decided to go ahead and make it.

This one was a lot more detailed than I expected. It took around 10 hours to complete. I think around 7 of those were stitching, the remaining 3 hours was backstitching. I can’t believe it took so long!

Above is just the stitching, before the details were added.

Assembly was pretty easy since the aperture card came with the kit. Just needed double sided tape to hold everything together.

Stitching

Started: April 9th

Finished: April 30th

Stitching time: 10 hours

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Rocking Horse

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This pattern is from a 1988 card kit. The pattern is hand drawn! I can’t imaging having to draw out patterns by hand. Sometimes advancements in technology are great.

Compared to the last several projects this one was easy. Mostly because the pattern was bigger than the actual design.

Well I thought it was easy until I started stitching. Then it took longer than expected to complete. There are several color changes and backstitching tends to take longer I think.

I have no idea what my deal is with metallic thread. I get all sweaty when it’s time to use it and that’s the worst time to have sweaty hands. By the second strand I was running it through Thread Magic at least 3 times to try and keep it together (usually it frays really bad). The extra coatings did help.

Since this is part of a kit, assembly went smoothly. Double sided tape to hold the aperture card together.

Stitching

Started: August 7th

Finished: September 4th

Stitching time: 7 hours

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Wrapping Bear

CraftyK 2 Comments

This cross stitch pattern is from a 1992 kit that was supposed to be made into an ornament. The design is by Celia Lange.

This pattern is riddled with 1/4 and technically 3/4 stitches. Since I knew there was so much backstitching I have learned that skipping the 3/4 stitches is better if backstitching is going through it.

Instead of following the pattern completely, I used quarter and whole stitches. This helped guide where the backstitching was going and not overwhelm the pattern.

This kit came with 18 count fabric which made it more challenging than most. It took several long breaks between stitching sessions to get this one done due to all the quarter stitches.

To finish this one I found simple paper in one of the Christmas paper packs. There is green in the cross stitch and green dots on the paper. Since there is text stitched I didn’t use any stamps or writing, just the pattern.

The cross stitch is stabilized with interfacing fabric and mounted with mounting tape. The paper is mounted to the card based with double sided tape.

Stitching

Started: June 1

Finished: July 17

Stitching time: 5.25 hours

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Old Fashioned Santa

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This cross stitch pattern is from a 1988 kit that was supposed to be made into an ornament. The design is by Lois Winston.

The design and stitching were simple which was nice. A little backstitching was involved too.

I wasn’t sure how to finish this one. I have a set of Christmas paper that looks “antique.” I found a page with old world Santa’s that match the cross stitch. Well, with one major difference, they are walking the opposite direction of each other. Even so, I went forward with using it.

Since there are so many Santa’s on the paper I decided to make it the background. The cross stitch is stabilized with interfacing fabric and mounted with mounting tape.

Stitching

Started: May 24

Finished: May 31

Stitching time: 2.5 hours

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Santa’s Sleigh

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This cross stitch pattern is from a 1988 kit that was supposed to be made into an ornament. The design is by Lois Winston.

This turned out cute and yet it’s so small! Getting all the backstitching in was a challenge and added quite a bit of time to finishing.

I took a risk with my paper choice. Hot pink with red for the Santas is overwhelming yet cute. I chose to place the cross stitch over the background with mounting tape instead of making a frame. This helped cut down some of the intensity.

The cross stitch is stabilized with interfacing fabric and cardstock. The interfacing is clear so the pink and Santa heads were showing through. Everything else is attached with double sided tape.

Stitching

Started: April 23

Finished: May 12

Stitching time: 5.5 hours

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Seasonal Goose

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Where to start with this one. I completed the stitching so long ago I don’t remember much about it.

This pattern came with a tri-fold aperture card ready to use. I didn’t have to make any decisions on paper, colors, or final size.

While stitching did take a while it was very nice to have all whole stitches. French knots went pretty well too on this one. I don’t think any are loose. The photos below are of the stitching in progress. The one on the right is what the pattern looked like before any backstitching or knots were applied. Those two things really made a difference!

The card does have elements that most in the series of kits don’t have. There is embossing on the front and the inside left panel. The company also embossed their logo on the back. The other cards I’ve completed from this series didn’t have that much extra detail.

To get everything assembled I used a light interfacing fabric behind the design and double-sided tape to hold it all together.

Stitching

Started: November 8

Finished: March 28

Stitching time: 11.5 hours

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Noel Candle cross stitch card

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This card wasn’t too bad to make. I had several delays getting it assembled due to house construction. It’s hard to make time for everything or have motivation in general to work on things.

Like the last cross stitch card this came from a 1980s kit. Everything comes ready to make the card, including the envelope. Due to life circumstances I decided to work on these cards since I need access to minimal materials to finish them off.

With this card I ended up searching for something to help with the metallic thread. There are several french knots in this pattern that are all to be done in metallic thread. Problem is, it frays and gets caught on itself when pulling the knot through. I ended up searching a cross stitching group on Facebook that I’m in and found someone recommended “Thread Magic.” A store locally had it and I had some money left on a gift card to use there so I ventured out to get some of this stuff.

It wasn’t as magical as I had hoped. I ran the metallic thread through the tiny container at least twice and it still had trouble staying together and being “smooth” when making the knot or pulling through the fabric. Since I have it I will probably try it again on future projects in hopes that it will be a more successful venture.

Overall I think the card turned out nice. I’m not sure what to do with these, but they are now in my inventory of cards pile.

Stitching

Started: May 23

Finished: June 20

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Joy cross stitch card

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If you look below you will see that I stitched this card a while back. It’s taken a while to get up the energy to assemble the card.

This pattern came from a 1988 kit I inherited from one of my mom’s friends. She has a ton of crafting things and cross stitch isn’t as easy for her any more so I have been able to take some of the kits and magazines to keep using them.

I’m usually not much for Christmas, but I’m still in the process of moving so my options are more limited with what projects I can work on. This project took a little bit of time as it’s small. The gold filament was also a challenge to work with. You don’t want sweaty hands with it that’s for sure!

This kit came with everything except the tape to hold the card together. Luckily I have double sided tape on hand from all my previous cards. The card has 3 panels, you put the cross stitch into the middle and fold a panel over to hide it. They also provide a card to go behind the cross stitch to help with stability.

Like usual I struggled with getting the pattern tight, you can see there it gaps from paper a bit. If I did this one again I would also cut down the fabric a little closer to the design. It was a bit close to the edges making the inside crinkle up a bit.

Overall a pretty easy project, just took a long time to put it together. Originally I was going to raffle off the card and send it to whoever won. Then I realized that it is a bit too early for Christmas. I can’t even claim Christmas in July yet!

Stitching

Started: March 19

Finished: April 20

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