The lovely people at The World of Cross Stitch magazine sent me a cross stitch kit to try. I’m now a regular knitter, and have tried my hand at embroidery (thanks to a kit I bought from Sublime Stitching), so cross stitch was a natural next step.
Actually, cross stitching is even easier than embroidery and knitting! You just stitch little x’s on grid-like fabric, et voila! A design. You can either do “counted” cross stitch, which means that you count the number of stitches from your pattern and recreate it on plain fabric, or you can buy pre-printed kits. I did a few practice stitches on some plain aida fabric and felt ready to tackle a new design after just a few minutes.
To be honest, I struggled a bit with the existing patterns I found online. They just didn’t fit with my decor (which leans more modern than country/whimsical). And since Vintage Savoir Faire is about rediscovering vintage crafts and adapting them for our modern lives … I decided to design my own!
I put together this design, using a vintage bird illustration and my GIMP graphical editor (Like photoshop, but free … I’m all about the free tools!)
Then I found a brilliant free online program, My Photo Stitch, where you can upload a photo, change a few settings, and it produces a cross stitch pattern for you. It’s not perfect, but if you’re willing to improvise a bit, it is a great starting point. I uploaded the design, and got back a detailed cross stitch design using 5 colors. (You can see I’m bad at photo editing, so the area around around the bird is shaded … this showed up in the cross stitch pattern so I had to ignore those stitches.)
Then the stitching began.
I liked that cross stitching didn’t require a lot of concentration. It’s just a basic x-stitch, so it’s easy to do while watching TV or talking with a friend.
And finally, my finished design!
If you’re interested in trying to cross stitch yourself, here’s a visual tutorial on how to cross stitch by Stitch School. And some inspiration for modern cross stitch by WallWork, Hello Sailor, and Feeling Stitchy.
I would like to see some more modern/alternative/edgy cross stitch patterns out there though! Know of any good resources? Let us know in the comments.
Great work A, and good resources too, thanks for the tips, my 10 yr old nephew likes cross stitch, but it is hard to find cool boylike designs, you have given me a great idea for his birthday pressie i will make him a cool kit of some rocking x-stitch patterns!
You did a great job transforming that bird into cross stitch – it looks great!