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Husker keychain

CraftyK Leave a comment

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 Something else I noticed was now the coasters I made a few years ago are now out of date.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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Noel

CraftyK Leave a comment

This card took a really long time. I started it and then life took a very different turn than expected. It drove my desire to do anything right out the window. After a few months I was finally willing to pick this back up again, to get it finished. It’s time to move onto something else.

This card is part of a set from the late 1980s. I still have about 5 of them left. This was the easiest pattern from the set. Even with the design being simple, if you start counting the rows of colors in the gradient, you’ll find they are not all correct. 🤫

Once I found the mistakes, I decided to run with it as is. Giving this piece a unique look since it no longer matches the pattern.

Assembly was straightforward. Some double sided tape and everything else was already provided with the kit. As with many of these “smaller” patterns, I am amazed how many hours it actually takes to finish.

Stitching

Started: October 16th

Finished: March 5th

Stitching time: 8.25 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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Joy cross stitch card

CraftyK Leave a comment

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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Bounce

CraftyK Leave a comment

This was one of the longest cross stitch I’ve had probably ever. After completing 50+ cross stitch cards in a year I was a bit burned out. I started this project right after finishing the card project and really struggled to keep up the motivation.

My niece’s looming graduation put me into high gear to get this one complete. After letting this sit for several months I finally picked it up again and really focused. The challenge of this pattern was all the odd stitching.

It was beyond just straight whole stitching, there were quarter and three-quarter and what were who knows what fraction ones that I converted to be something standard.

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By early 2021 I was finally making some progress. I even managed to take pictures along the way. I’m not sure what skill level this pattern was meant to be, but as someone who has many many hours of cross stitching under my belt, this one was downright hard and frustrating. 

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Even with much concentration I still managed to miss-count and make the pattern my own, but not on purpose. At some point I gave up and just kept pushing forward to eventually get to this stage.

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There are a lot of details. Tigger is cute, until you have to backstitch each odd shaped stripe. It really makes everything pop. There is a reason for backstitching! It was nice that everything was one color. 

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For anyone who follows this now you know why it has been such a long time since my last post. And a very long story about a house that has made life all the more interesting and annoying.

Stitching

Started: November 29, 2019

Finished Stitching: February 15, 2021

Finished (with backstitching): March 9, 2021

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top of 40 card

Life Begins at 40!

CraftyK Leave a comment

Oh where to start with this one! It was stitched quickly, but the card making was one problem after another. This one was quite improvised due to extreme time constraints. When a birthday lands on a Sunday I lose a day. My goal is to have it arrive via mail on Saturday. Luckily it is only going a few blocks away (I think).

40 in progress

This card is going to a former co-worker of mine. We took walks pretty much daily for several months. During those walks I learned she was turning 40 this year. After acquiring several new cross stitch books this year I came across this pattern and decided that it would be the 50th card for the year. While it’s more like 45th in order of birthdays, this one brought me to a total of 50 cards to be made in 2019.

backstitching 40

Since this person shares a birthday with my brother the pressure was on to get them both done in time. And a mad rush to the post office to get them out on time! This pattern had backstitching which slowed down progress a bit.

The stitching and interfacing fabric went just fine for this one, it was the actual card part when things fell apart. Remember, a bit rushed on time for this one.

This person is super positive and bright. Even if things are going terribly, she’ll have a smile on her face and do whatever it is that needs doing. So a bright yellow paper for the card base what what I chose. This card is a 4.25×5.5, minus a little due to measuring errors.

angled view from bottom of 40 card

The butterfly paper was supposed to be a frame, but I didn’t measure correctly and cut too much fabric off the pattern. I was very glad to have the yellow base. Creating a floating cross stitch in the middle wasn’t so bad, unexpected, but it works. First time for everything!

I entered the wrong numbers in the design space for the Cricut, so the ‘s’ on ‘roses’ was cut off by time I was done trimming it back to fit the actual card base. As I was laying the frame on using double sided tape the paper bubbled up. I’m assuming in my rush to finish everything lots of things went wrong, but the card is bright and exciting to look at, which is all that matters.

Stitching

Started: October 21st
Finished: October 23rd

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full front of Life Begins at 40! card

top of Boba Fett card

Boba Fett

CraftyK Leave a comment

Anyone else have some Star Wars fans in their life? I have a few and bought the AMAZING Star Wars cross stitch pattern book (not an affiliate link). It’s so nice to have a book of patterns that are official to use for people who really love this universe.

Boba Fett in progress

You may remember in February I made the 3 Stormtrooper pattern for my nephew (my brother’s kid). My brother is more known for his Chewbacca costume, but I swear at some point he has mentioned Boba Fett. So on that point I’m hoping for the best. There just weren’t any Chewie patterns that I liked.

This card ended up being a 5×7 because it is fairly tall. I special ordered some sage colored 14 count Aida cloth. I think the book called for something even darker, but I think this worked out well. The photos don’t capture the color of the cloth, either too blue or yellow, just wasn’t into balancing today.

laying down angled view of Boba Fett card

The inside of the card is also unique. I have a daily calendar from 2016 that I’ve been slowly using on Star Wars cards for my brother and nephew. This time I used 3 pages to line the inner left side of the card. This makes it even more Star Wars-y right? Even though it’s from the beginning of A New Hope, it’s still the right movie series.

reusing daily Star Wars calendar

The frame and stitching are mounted on regular white card stock. The black frame was cut out with my Cricut. Everything is taped down using double sided tape.

Stitching

Started: October 16th
Finished: October 21st

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Boba Fett full front of card

ice cream card laying down

We ALL scream for ICE CREAM

CraftyK Leave a comment

The actual cross stitch on this card is probably the smallest one I have done all year. When I asked my cousin’s husband some things she likes one of his answers was ice cream. I remembered I had saved this pattern years ago from a cross stitching website that had free patterns from their magazine available. It’s so cute I knew it was just what I needed.

close up of ice cream cone

Since the stitching wasn’t going to take up a huge space on the card I wanted to add some stamping. This included a few firsts for me. I tried out a white pigmented ink. I have a purple fine glittery embossing powder that I decided to try out on the white ink. I still haven’t figured out how to keep the powder on just the ink and not loose it all from everywhere, so it looks a bit messier than I intended. I’m still trying to figure out this whole embossing thing.

focus on stamping

It was fun to watch this one as the heat gun finally started to solidify the powder. It did take a really long time and the paper warped. The card was under a big book to try and flatten it out before sending.

ice cream cone with no backstitching

I also remembered to photograph it before the backstitching. It’s amazing what some outlines can do to a pattern. You can tell what it is, but it really pops once it’s done. I almost forgot the stem, but luckily realized it before I put everything away.

front top view of ice cream card

I know I said that I did some new things, another new thing was mixing stamps. I didn’t want a bunch of white space so I went through my stamps to find something to fill in the space with. I chose the lollipop as it’s another type of sweet. In the same set I found this small confetti looking stamp. I don’t know that I used it as intended, but I tried to put it around in different areas to fill in the space. I feel that I could have done some more maybe? It’s like using a brush in Photoshop, but this can’t be undone. Once you stamp, it’s on there. Makes me scared to use it.

So this was a first in trying out layering different elements. The different ink colors, stamps from different sets, and embossing some ink. I took some hot pink construction paper to put behind the ice cream cone. The pink paper is attached with double sided tape and the cone is attached to that with foam tape. I think I might have a foam tape addiction? I’m using it on just about every card that doesn’t have a frame. I felt that the yellow paper would mean losing the pink of the ice cream, so I made the shadow thing behind it to bring back the pinks.

Stitching

Started: September 7th
Finished: September 7th

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full front of ice cream card

bottom

Sleepy cat with books

CraftyK Leave a comment

This card is for a second cousin of mine and the brother of the Scholarly Cat recipient. This is the family where one of the kids is allergic to cats and they can no longer have one as a pet. So I’m creating a cat they can have around.

This one does have a fur from one of my cats that got caught under the interfacing fabric while I ironed it on. So there is some real cat on this card. Hard to avoid when they insist on sitting in my lap while stitching.

most of front of card top

This pattern and overall card is pretty straightforward, nothing too fancy this time. The cat body is in the colors recommended by the pattern. The rest are from my scrap collection to continue using that up. Once I got started counting the stitches was pretty easy.

side view

This one is mounted on a slightly textured wallpaper. Like his brother he is into something called Larping. It sounds Medieval to me so I found a more antique type wallpaper I thought was fitting. Using foam tape I mounted the cat onto the wallpaper. I used double sided tape to mount the wallpaper to the cardstock.

Stitching

Started: July 3rd
Finished: July 10th

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full front of card