I’m wholly unsure whether there is a global Me Made May again, but I’m doing it anyway because I make too many clothes that I do not wear enough. I have also recently purged a bit of the closet and want to see what is leftover and what I have no interest in wearing again.
Colourful eggies!
As always, Easter means my one foray into painting a year. This time I set out for colourful. I didn’t want to do the same thing that I normally do, so some different shapes were chosen. Since I do still like polka dot, I settled on polka triangle. They are pointing in different directions and I think I almost all the colours in my waterpaint box were used.
For the second one, I wanted to do a puzzle. It’s not great, because planning this in advance would’ve absolutely helped. However, it’s still colourful, it’s entirely painted and I have put a bunch of different shapes on it. Now to wait until tomorrow to see whether I boiled them long enough and they are still edible!
A little embroidered kingfisher in different shades of blue.
I have been engaged in mystery knit alongs (tip, don’t try to do two at the same time that both require lots of knitting) and have had little time to do anything else. However, before I got distracted by those, I finished some more cross stitch patterns!
The first was a really small but super cute bird by LaSelvaDesign. It used more colours than most of the other projects I’ve done, but sometimes only three or five stitches. I love how it came out. The different shades of blue really complement each other and bring some sort of depth?
It’s framed in something that looks woodish but is actually plastic and flexible. Since I left so much fabric around it, it’s been a bit hard to get into this frame, but it does look really nice on my wall. Adorable, if I say so myself.
| Project | Kingfisher |
| Author | LaSelvaDesign |
| Type | Pattern only |
| Search words | kingfisher; bird |
| Location | Drive |
| #stitches | 353 |
| Purchased | 09-01-2026 |
| Date started | 17-02-2026 |
| Date finished | 20-02-2026 |
A cosy halloween pumpkin in 12 steps.
I bought a super cute cross stitch pattern of a pumpkin under a leaf that I wanted to stitch up. Due to the light colours of some of the outside stitches, it didn’t feel right to stitch on white. So I decided to dye some embroidery fabric blue with a cotton dye.
The intention was to have an uneven fabric, with some lighter sections. After the first bit of fabric went into the bath, I decided to add a second. This is why the left bit of fabric above isn’t as dark. It wasn’t in the dye bath for nearly as long.
I liked how it turned out and chose the darker one for my pumpkin. I cut all the threads and put them through a cardboard thread holder. I always estimate that a length of 6 strand embroidery floss will make around 180 stitches (60 per double strand section). So I measured accordingly.
Then I got to work. I wanted to start near the middle, to make sure everything would work out, so I stated with the darkest green first. Then came the purple and the black before the first orange was added. That first one brought him firmly into temporary spooky territory.
The third and fourth orange were added before the highlights of light yellow and light green were completed. I do think it looks a little magical with the nice stars all around. I really enjoyed this project. It went quick, the amount of stitches was doable and the outcome is really lovely.
| Project | Pumpkin Cozy Halloween Night |
| Author | nathnolu |
| Type | Pattern only |
| Search words | pumpkin; leaf umbrella; stars |
| Location | Drive |
| #stitches | 2290 |
| Purchased | 09-01-2026 |
| Date started | 25-01-2026 |
| Date finished | 01-02-2026 |
Warm but neutral ear coverings to get me through the end of winter.
I’ve been wearing my plaid earflap hat a lot this winter. It’s been cold and my ears seem to want to freeze without earflaps. The coat I’m currently wearing is red, and it all .. doesn’t really go together. So I set out to make a new, slightly more neutral hat. I grabbed the leftovers from a larp cape project and a scarf and got to work.
For this version I used the Whitney Sews pattern for a newsboy hat with some modifications. There were still some brim inserts in the hoard, so I traced that shape and used it as the brim. Then I took the original earflap pattern from the first hat add added those too. I did decide to cut a wedge off the top so they would fit better.
I’m quite proud of the point matching of the top of the hat and the lining. It turned out very neat, but made the hat also look a bit naked. So after faffing about with my button press, I managed to make a nice covered button for the top, to finish it off. I hope this one becomes a firm favourite even if the amount of poof in the hat is less than I hoped for.
A somewhat smaller model paper head.
I made a hat, it’s lovely, I’ll show you some other day. For that hat to be put on the blog though, I needed a hat stand of some sort. Cue me attempting to put the hat on Paper Head, and remembering that Paper Head is much larger than my head. The hat didn’t fit. So to remedy the issue, I made a new, smaller paper head.
The original paper head has a 60 cm circumference. My head is about 53.5 cm (now that I’ve cut of most of my hair). So following the instructions that came with OrigamiTemplates Low Poly Head, I multiplied that number by .6 and found that I should print the pattern at 89% (I rounded down 89.133…%). So I did precisely that, kept my fingers crossed that it would work and set out to glue it all together. It turned out very decently.
Next to the end results with just a few glue smears on the outside, I only have a blister. I really enjoy putting these sorts of things together, even if I dislike the cutting step because of the blisters and somewhat sore hands. But I do now have a new object to model stuff like hats and earrings on. Double win: fun and practical!
Victorian vibes with frogs, ghosts, cats and candles.
In the ‘big haul of small cross stitch patterns’, I also found this cute Family Portrait. It’s an almost Victorian looking frog in a top hat with a little cat looking in on the left, a big ghost looking in on the right and a tiny frog in a little frame in the back.
It was a lot of fun to see all the little bits appearing while working on it. I also liked the full coverage of this project. The cream from the shirt was the last colour that was working, so I could already envision what the end result would look like.
I now have seven bits of embroidery on the wall. The vibes of this one are a bit different from the others, but I think it still works together. I hope that another small thing will fit on the right string, so I’m working on that at the moment!
| Project | Family Portrait |
| Author | nathnolu |
| Type | Pattern only |
| Search words | frog; ghost; black cat; striped wallpaper; top hat |
| Location | Drive |
| #stitches | 1575 |
| Purchased | 09-01-2026 |
| Date started | 19-01-2029 |
| Date finished | 21-01-2026 |
Be what you want, now in embroidery.
It was a co-workers birthday recently, and I wanted to make a thing. So I looked around Etsy and found this cute fish with an attitude. It seemed to fit well so I bought and made it.
Quick project with interesting colours. The oranges seemed extremely different from each other while working with it, but they go well together once completed. I later debated whether I should’ve done the background in a different colour, but I think the blue bowl makes it separate enough from the background. I chose to put it in a gold frame because my co-worker is a sparkly lady.
| Project | Mindset is everything |
| Author | MaxStitchesArt |
| Type | Pattern only |
| Search words | goldfish; shark; mindset |
| Location | Drive |
| #stitches | 1346 |
| Purchased | 09-01-2026 |
| Date started | 15-01-2026 |
| Date finished | 18-01-2026 |
Black makes this pastel bubble really pop.
I wanted some small approachable embroidery projects, so off to Etsy I went. The designer of this one had a few more creatures in bubbles but this one really caught my eye. The little manta ray is so like what you see when you walk through one of those aquarium tunnels in the zoo.
Since it was so pastel in its colours, it needed a dark base to pop. However, that also meant that I couldn’t really put a 10×10 grid on it, like I normally do. And with so many ‘free floating’ bits, this meant a lot more counting. I liked the outcome, but I didn’t enjoy working on black all that much because it is so much harder without the grid handhold. Still, lovely addition to the embroidery wall!
| Project | Bubble Manta Ray |
| Author | TizaThreadArt |
| Type | Pattern only |
| Search words | bubble; manta ray |
| Location | Drive |
| #stitches | 675 |
| Purchased | 09-01-2026 |
| Date started | 18-01-2026 |
| Date finished | 19-01-2026 |
Black and white with a pop of love.
I haven’t yet found a ‘Ravelry’ for cross stitch. There’s Pattern Keeper, where you can store your patterns and mark which stitches have been completed, but you can’t mark when you started (or finished). That seemed to be the type of information I also found very useful in Ravelry so I started a spreadsheet.
For this project for example, I’ve got:
| Project | Dino Kisses |
| Author | MegC |
| Type | Pattern only |
| Search words | t-rex; dinosaur; kissing; heart; skeleton |
| Location | Drive |
| #stitches | 5175 |
| Purchased | 23-10-2025 |
| Date started | 26-12-2025 |
| Date finished | 07-01-2026 |
It took me two months from purchase to start but only two-ish weeks to finish the project. Pretty decent going with only three colours. I did the heart first, then the skeletons and then completed the bodies of the faT-rexes. I made two changes to the original pattern; I didn’t do one stitch on the bottom of the left foot of the right dinosaur, since it didn’t seem to belong there. On the right foot of the left dinosaur, I made the bottom toe-bean black and didn’t make it stick out below. I really like how they turned out, but endless black did become a little bit of a chore.
No results found. Try a different search.
No results match these filters. Try clearing some, or searching for something else.
No results match these filters. Try clearing some, or searching for something else.
Something went wrong. Please try again.
No filters available
