Tag backstitch

cake cat laying down angled

A Cat Made Cake

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This card finishes out one of my cousin’s families. This particular card is for his wife. While I tried to make it the same size as the other cards, the stitching ended up being too large and had to be placed on a 5×7 card.

If you would like to see the rest of the family cards you can find my cousin, his oldest, and youngest. I can’t remember which one is allergic to cats, but they used to have a couple. I wanted to give them all cats they can keep. And probably includes some authentic cat fur in the mix, because, well, my cats like to leave their hair on everything!

before backstitching on cake cat

I got the pattern for this card a long time ago off of the cross-stitching website. It is no longer available and I have been unable to find another copy. I believe it is in an old copy of The World of Cross Stitch magazine, but I have no idea how to get a hold of one since I am not in the UK.

This is the most adorable pattern and one of my favorite cards I have made this year. This one took a little longer than I expected. There is a lot of detail in it. So many colors to create all the shading. Then the backstitching took quite a while, but I finished that on a plane ride. Backstitching really does make a difference.

front angle of cake cat

I used the Cricut to cut out the frame, the paper is from a book of scrapbook paper I bought at one point. It turned out a lot nicer than I expected when I picked the paper.

Stitching

Started: September 13th
Finished: September 26th

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front of cake cat card

close up of stitching

H is for Heinrich

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

Hippo start

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.

Hippo no backstitchUnlike 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.

close up of glitter glue

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.

Full card standing

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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Full front of Hippo card

Curious Cat

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The curious cat. Aren’t they all so curious and frustrating at times? I happen to have 2 of them and know all too well their mischievous ways. Little did I know that a second cousin of mine also has an affinity for these adorable creatures.

It was just finding a pattern that would be fun for a birthday card. I was able to find one in an old pattern book for afghans (blankets, not the people). I’m not sure if this was supposed to be stitched on much larger cloth, but I went with 14 count Aida for this one. This pattern is only 39 stitches high by 42 wide! So small, yet so many stitches in there.

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For the longest time the body of this cat looked like a fish to me. My niece guessed what it was very quickly on Snapchat. The flowers added a nice pop of color to this piece.

I went with all scrap thread for this one since it was so small. I figured I would be safe. I was able to match leftovers from a kit to one of my bobbins of thread I already had. They are close enough I combined them. Can you tell? It’s the one with way more thread than the rest in the picture above.

Once I got to the “framing” of this piece I went for wallpaper. I wanted something brick or at least brick-like and found this goldish heavily textured paper.

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The parts that stand out aren’t wrinkles, they are meant to be there. I wanted to try and align the top line with the rope from the basket, but it wasn’t meant to be. The Cricut isn’t the most reliable thing in the world for matching what you see on the screen to where it might cut your paper. I took a gamble and lost this one, but it still turned out ok. I did like the extra space at the bottom to put a little birthday sign.

I employed the Cricut for some drawing. The letters are drawn with a pen by the Cricut and then it cut out the square. That is mounted with foam tape to be more 3D. I really enjoy foam tape. I was lazy and didn’t find a stamp to try and fit the 3.25″ width I was cutting (to match the frame) so I used the writing feature of the Cricut instead.

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I mounted everything to white cardstock with double sided tape. The wallpaper is struggling to stick though. The backing of this wallpaper is a strange fabric weave type thing.

Stitching

 

Started: January 8th
Finished: January 13th

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