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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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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Stormtrooper Line Up

February 9, 2019February 4, 2019CraftyK Leave a comment

My nephew Ben is going to start amassing quite the collection of Star Wars cards from me. I made one for his birthday last year and another for May 4th. Now he will have a more intricate card with Stormtroopers cross stitched on it.

This card is part of my 2019 project to finish one cross stitch card for every member of my mom’s side of the family who is over the age of 5 (had to draw the line somewhere). I am now in February and getting them done about a week before they need to arrive.

This pattern came from an official Star Wars cross stitch book. While it is available in Whole Foods, I went with Amazon (same difference right?) since it was slightly cheaper. I recreated the pattern in WinStitch so I could mark the stitches off as I went. The book doesn’t stay open the best either, so this was the easiest way to work.

It took a few days to complete the whole thing. Dark fabric 18 count is hard to work on! You need so much light to really see what the heck you’re doing. The black was even harder to see. Luckily a few days before I started my husband needed extra light and borrowed my knock-off ice light. After much frustration I remembered the light was in the next room and grabbed it for my purposes. Boy did it make a difference!

I was able to see what I was doing and finish stitching with much more ease. After I finished that part I pulled out the handy Cricut to cut my frame and text.

For the frame I wanted to have the cutout closer to the top of the card and give a little breathing room around the heads.

The text I did in Star Jedi font (pretty sure it’s on dafont.com) and added the lines at the top and bottom. I decided to do one long line of text and probably should have split it up. I think it still looks ok the way it is. Not sure that I got it straight though, I tried a few times laying it down before going with it.

On the inside of the card I used a couple of pages from an old daily calendar. I’ve been using these for my Star Wars cards and felt it was another good use of them just to add some color to the inside.

Stitching

Started: January 30th
Finished: February 3rd

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Yellow Bird

February 3, 2019February 1, 2019CraftyK Leave a comment

This little bird is tiny and somehow there are 13 different colors! I couldn’t believe it as I was collecting the thread/floss for this project. I must admit it looks pretty lifelike now that it’s done, so all those color changes were worth it.

This card is for my aunt whose birthday is today. I’m not sure on her age and feel it’s not appropriate to share anyway. She loves to photograph the birds that come to her backyard to eat and if they found a home in a birdhouse, sleep over. I am pretty sure I have seen some sort of black and yellow bird in her photos and this one made me think of her.

As you can see below this pattern came together extremely quickly, which is good because I was very much behind (and still am) on getting these done in a timely manner.

Because of the size I decided before I began this one would not be “framed” as I have done to many of the other patterns. I wanted to use my embossing machine again. I have a folder (I think that’s what those are called) with happy birthday all over it that I wanted to use. It’s similar to the Purple Morpho from last year.

Instead of using scrapbook paper I went with wallpaper. I did two colors and discovered that the softer less “papery” wallpaper does not emboss. I wasn’t sure how it would go and I was happy with either as the background, the silver won.

For mounting I used a small piece of grey paper foam tape mounted to the card then used some double sided tape and E-6000 for attaching the fabric to the paper.

Something I learned while studying for my CPP exam was that if you want to show texture, light from the side. So this go-round of highlighting the embossing on a card I was able to show better what it looks like.

Stitching

Started: January 28th
Finished: January 29th

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Color the Rainbow

January 31, 2019January 28, 2019CraftyK Leave a comment

I may have gotten a little over confident on this one. I thought it would be extremely simple to finish in just a couple of days. Instead it took me around 2 weeks.

Most of the delay was my fault. I was studying for an exam and had to put cross stitching to the side for a couple weeks. The exam was out of town so while I was away I also wasn’t working on this.

Once I got back I realized just how close to deadline I was. I’ve been working frantically through my last weekend before it needed to be sent trying to finish. I even worked on it while walking on the treadmill (didn’t go the greatest, but got me just a little closer).

I did finish late Sunday night getting everything assembled, photographed, and in the mail. This card is staying in town and actually not going all that far. I’m sure it will have a journey around town to get to its final destination though.

This card is for a cousin of mine. When I saw this pattern it made me think of her. She is a teacher, but I think it was more the bright colors that drew me in.

I wanted those colors to really stand out so I chose a grey paper as my frame. I’m still not great at getting the work stretched correctly while mounting (you’ll notice it looks a little bubbled) though I did make many more attempts with this one.

I used my Cricut to cut the frame and write Happy Birthday! along the bottom. Overall I think this card turned out quite nice.

Pattern from dailycrossstitch.com.

Stitching

Started: January 13th
Finished: January 27th

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Curious Cat

January 28, 2019January 15, 2019CraftyK Leave a comment

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.

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.

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.

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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Young Chef

January 26, 2019January 15, 2019CraftyK Leave a comment

When looking for patterns for this project of cross stitch cards for my mom’s family I found most at dailycrossstitch.com. The patterns are pretty simple and small which works perfectly for cards. I don’t even think the patterns have backstitching or odd stitch sizes.

This is going to be a huge help with getting around 40 cards (might be over that?) done this year. January and June are the busiest months for birthdays so in between I need to keep cranking these cards out.

This card is for a second cousin of mine. His mom already has her card. Her son, while an avid football player, also enjoys cooking and baking. If I recall correctly he now has a Kitchen Aid mixer to aid in his baking endeavors.

So for his hobby of being in the kitchen I chose a chef pattern. I am trying very hard not to have a repeat pattern. Having many avid football fans in the family makes that a little more challenging and requires a little sleuthing to find additional interests.

I have many papers, but it was hard to find one that said “food” or “chef”. I ended up with a brown checkered pattern which mimics a traditional picnic blanket or pizza restaurant table cloth. This is actually wallpaper. I can’t imagine having something so dark on a wall, but I guess that’s why it’s now discontinued. It works well and doesn’t detract too much from the actual cross stitch.

To cut the paper I used my handy Cricut. It’s not perfect, but it gets the job done and I’m able to place the pattern neatly in the newly created frame. I mounted all of this with double sided tape onto my standard white cardstock.

Stitching

Started: December 31st
Finished: January 6th

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For the Love of Football

January 22, 2019January 15, 2019CraftyK Leave a comment

I’m not sure where to begin with this one. I put it off for as long as I could. My time is being split more and more between photography and my “day job”, leaving less time for cross stitching. The impending holidays also brought on a new low for me mentally making it hard to want to start up another cross stitch.

One night I managed to just get this started. I had everything ready, but never started. Eventually mid December I finally managed to get this one going. It’s so basic it really should have been quick, but there are so many stitches!

This card is for a new member of the family. He married in a few years back to a cousin of mine. I don’t know him all that well. I do know he loves football. He’s always full of energy and extremely nice to everyone he meets. Since he loves football I found this pattern from DailyCrossStitch.com to be the perfect fit.

I picked out 3 different colors for this card. My first choice was brown to not detract from the cross stitched piece. I selected two more in case the Cricut didn’t cut the card correctly. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to line things up on the screen to match what happens in real life.

Even though the outside is a “drab” brown the inside is a party! I found a bright balloon paper to finish the back of the cross stitch. I wasn’t able to find anything I liked and I didn’t want to use white, so this is what happened instead. It is a birthday card after all.

Another card down and delivered and a lot more to come.

Stitching

Started: December 13th
Finished: December 30th

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2019 Cards

January 3, 2019September 6, 2021CraftyK Leave a comment

If you don’t want to read the nuances about the cards I created in 2019, this is where you can see them all by month of creation. It can also be a place to get some inspiration for your own cards!