Sure, you could spin this heart and arrow pin cushion as a Valentine project, but it's beautifully designed in a way that doesn't pin (pun intended) it down to just one holiday. Head over to the Purl Bee for the chart and full tutorial.
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How-To: Cross-Stitched Hand Warmers
How-To: Nesting Doll Pin Cushion
When you're a needlearts person, you can't look at a material with holes in it without thinking, "Hey ... I could stitch on that!" I've seen stitching on window screens, and I've stitched on peg boards, so I love seeing this front porch sign in progress over on Stitch-Cook-Grow-Love. Lily took metal mesh and stapled it to the back of a large wooden frame, and is stitching a sign with strips of fabric. She gives some handy tips on what kind and size of fabric "thread" to use for stitching. I can't wait to see the finished sign!
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How-To: Cross-Stitch Wall Art on Peg Board
Cross-Stitch Cars
Cross-Stitched Eggs
A couple of weeks ago, my daughter and I went camping together. The weekend was unusually cold for Texas (sadly, it already feels like spring here) and we had to do some serious bundling up to stay warm. We'd brought along packs of handwarmers, and while they were handy - pun intended - I felt like they were wasteful. By the end of the weekend, we had a bag full of them to be thrown away. I like the idea of reusable handwarmers instead, and even more so when they involve cross-stitch. This tutorial from Wild Olive is a perfect fit!
Related:
How-To: Hot Dog Hand Warmers
How-To: Crocheted Striped Handwarmers
Fans of Portlandia have a new catch phrase from the second season of the show. I mean, "Put a Bird on it" is so 2011, amiright? Now when you hear folks saying, "We can pickle that!" you'll know you've found true Portlandia friends. But why just say it when you can stitch it? The newest Subversive Cross Stitch Pattern makes me hope there will be a whole Portlandia series of stitcheries ...
Two of my very favorite things, Star Wars and stitchery, come together over on the blog Han Stitched First. Started by Whatever James, it's a blog that celebrates Star Wars in all forms of needlework. There is even a Star Wars stitch-a-long for 2012. The above "Han Shot First" cross-stitch was created by Katie Kutthroat and featured on Han Stitched First. [via @TheCrochetDude!
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Needle-Felted Jabba The Hut
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The Big Bang Theory is one of my favorite television shows, so I was excited to see a fun roundup of BBT crafts over on Geek Crafts recently. One of my favorites of the bunch was this awesome cross-stitched piece based on the famous Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock game that the Sheldon made up on the show, stitched by Craftster user, doaflip. Of course, the RPSLS embroidered flow chart from Craftster user, mindboggld, was a close second favorite ... Long live geeky stitchery!
When Jenny Hart tweeted about these rad cross-stitch t-shirts from Origami Ghost, I instantly added them to my Christmas wish list. I also ended up singing Domo Arigato for the rest of the day ...
Originally posted 2008-10-21 06:35:46. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Continental has oblique (diagonal lines not on true diagonals) on every row. If you stitch so that these lines are only on every other row, that is not Continental.
What you are stitching is a combination of Continental and Half-cross. Many teachers and book call this Continental — it’s not, it’s incorrect and causes ridges and major distortion. I know many fine needlepointers who think this and therefore mistakenly malign the true Continental Stitch.
The source of the problem is thinking you must always go up in a clean home and down in a dirty hole. If you think that then the combination stitch will result.
Correctly done, in Continental every other row (the even rows) will come up in a hole which already has some thread in it, and down in the empty hole.
There is no other way to do this stitch properly, no matter how you turn the canvas.
Watch the video, see what I mean, and enjoy this wrongly maligned stitch.
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Quick Continental Note
You may think when you see something in color that it is actually printed or displayed in the color it is. But actually most printed and displayed things are created by using mixtures of just four colors.
While you might not think about it, you actually know this; it’s why you only buy three colored ink cartridges.
The colors are created by using different shades, mixtures and quantities of these four colors and you can look at pictures of these mixtures.
But Evelin Kasikov took this one step farther in her embroidered color chart. She used the cyan/magenta/yellow/black used in color printing as the basis.
It was part of an exhibit in London. The page showing this work much larger than pictured here has some thumbnails (linked to pages) of more of her work, often exploring CYMK, typography, and embroidery. While done in free Cross Stitch, it’s really cool.
A big shout out to my daughter who sent me the link to this.
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I love when people find inspiration to stitch on everyday objects that weren't necessarily intended for stitchery. Camilla of Family Chic transformed an inexpensive IKEA pencil cup with some yarn and a tapestry needle. It's fun to play with different stitches and design, and would be easy to unthread and change out when you get tired of your current stitches. A couple of summers ago, I did a similar thing on my mesh bicycle basket. Feather and blanket stitches worked particularly well, and I love seeing the colorful embroidery while I'm riding. What other everyday objects can you think of that would work well for stitchery?
