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.
In July, I signed up for a Mystery Stitch Along called Twigs & Tea by Fine Frog Stitching. We only knew the general theme, tea party, that it was going to start August 8 and be completed in 14 installments on December 5. I just bought the pattern and got all the updates along the way.
We started with the frames and then added on different bits each week. Either one of the animals in the frames, the items on the shelves, the landscape, the table cloth and the items on the table. Most of these were fun and exciting little projects. There’s a bit too much pink in it, and this was especially apparent in the awful boring-to-complete-not-to-look-at table cloth. I finished all but the last two clues in the time frame they were intended.
Then I had to give myself a kick up the backside and finally finish the bear and the flower pot on December 24. I was so excited that it was done, that I didn’t even iron it before sending a picture to my friend who was also doing the stitch along. You can clearly see all the creases from my hoop, and it looks so much better when it’s ironed!
Yet more evidence that breaking large projects up into smaller sections and adding an arbitrary timeline increases my completion rate. At some point I’m going to have to sign up for a quilt along, don’t I..
Adding some embroidery to a double handle tote bag.
I was browsing Etsy (always a bad idea for the bank account) and found a bunch of super cool cross stitch patterns. This galaxy animal paw from OhMyStitchesShop spoke to me. My brother’s partner is graduating as a vet and they own dogs, so I thought this would be fun for her. There are so many stitches in this, I highly underestimated how much time 5552 stitches would take, even in eight different colours.
I started with the big pad and finished it fully apart from the little stars. I did a part of those in white, before I decided that I wanted to use glow in the dark thread for those, to be extra appropriate. So I took the white out and went on to stitch the small pads and then added the glow in the dark.
To make this a useful(ish) gift, I decided on making the embroidery the front pocket of a tote bag. I stitched some white cotton to the back of the embroidery and attached that to the purple fabric that I used for my Edwardian skirt. Since I am short and I know how annoying it is to have bags drag on the floor, I added a double handle. On the inside are short straps, and there are long ones for over the shoulder too. If I ever make myself a tote, I’m totally doing this again.
The project was finished and mailed. I hope she gets some use out of it and I had a lot of fun making it. And have thus since learnt that I prefer my projects either smaller, or coming in bite sized pieces, more on that later!
For the last couple of months, I’ve had a zip lock pouch in my bag that held everything I needed to make ‘The Misfit’. A cross stitch pattern kit from Heritage Crafts. I ended up stitching a polar bear hiding in a bunch of penguins. The kit has eight colours of floss, but by occasionally using two different colours in the same stitch they manage to achieve ten different colour combinations. You start with all the cross stitches and then you define the animals by adding the back stitch.
After I finished all the cross stitches, you could sort of see the critters starting to appear, but by gradually adding the back stitch you can really see them come alive. I didn’t finish this in a few sittings, this thing went all over the country with me since October. It’s small and flat enough to bring anywhere and easy enough to pick back up at any time. I finally finished it on December 20th and have now framed it and it’s hanging on my wall with some of my other cross stitch projects.
This year, I really aimed to finish my best wishes cards before Christmas. The plan had four main parts: 1. Decide on a design 2. Finish the embroidery 3. Make the cards 4. Write and deliver the cards
Step 1 went well. I had found this super cute cross stitch kit from Bothy Threads called Christmas Quackers that I thought would be perfect. Living in the Netherlands, I’m not sure how many people know the English tradition of Christmas crackers, but the duck was too cute to pass up. So once I finished another embroidery, I set out to stitch this one.
Step 2 went decently. I messed up a few times (counting is hard!), but managed to fix the mistakes and ended up with the perfect duck. I really love the fly away feathers on the side. I prefer my cards to be not purely Christmas coded, so I replaced the Christmas Quackers text with Quacking 2026. It was stitched with a gold thread that was absolutely awful to work with, not worth it either since it barely shows up when I photographed it.
Step 3 only had minor mishaps. I made three kinds of cards this year. A small version for roller derby (6 per page), a medium version for work (4 per page) and a large version for sending (2 per page). The S was just printed and had a star cut out. The M was printed with two punched stars and a bit of ho ho ho fabric threaded through. The L was printed with two bits of ho ho ho fabric stuck on using a wax seal (in different colours) with stars. The printer was the main mishap machine, with random white lines appearing in the middle of the image sometimes. Luckily I had enough of the linnen paper to print some more.
Step 4 was done in installments but I managed it all before Christmas. I know some have already been delivered but some may still be on the way. So the only bit that was laid by the wayside was writing the blog post. So I hope all the best for you and your loved ones, and a Quacking 2026!
So when I was buying the big cross stitch haul for my holiday, I also purchased Eleanor Teasdale’s “I’m Guinea Love You Forever” by Bothy Threads. It was one of the smaller ones and I wanted to make it for a friend. So I got started and honestly, it looked something had barfed colour before the backstitch was completed. Those little blobs were very unappealing. I also had to change the text at the bottom, since ‘I’m Guinea love you forever’ seemed a bit odd for friends, so I settled on ‘Guinea love friendship forever’. This meant I had to do some font designing, but I think it turned out cute.
The one thing I didn’t like about this kit was that I had to interpret the colour chart myself. They supplied a list with the colours, but hadn’t put the actual threads with their correct symbols. I had to do that myself. Somehow, I found this very scary, because who knows how I might interpret colour names and potentially be wrong. In the end, I think it turned out fine, and a second kit from Bothy didn’t have this drawback.
In late August, I signed up for a Mystery Stitch Along, where you get bits of a cross stitch pattern every week and sew along not knowing what the final image will be. The amount of cross stitch in the mystery isn’t enormous, so I decided to buy some extra kits to keep myself occupied. The first one was by Alisa, called Boats at Dawn. It’s some quite pastel looking sailboats that seemed very calm and accessible.
I was not wrong in that assessment. It was very calm and accessible, for which the size (6×9 cm) absolutely helped. In contrast to what I was used to, this pattern also used half stitches and backstitches, so I did some new things. It was finished fairly quickly and I like it a lot. I sourced a little picture frame, wrapped it around some cardboard and put it behind the glass. I’ll be able to look at a little bit of pastel ocean scape whenever I feel like it.
A little penguin necklace for those days that needle a little more joy.
One Tuesday, I was sitting in my house, enjoying my day off and thought: what will I do today. The answer turned out to be ‘browse for small embroidery patterns and make a tiny hoop necklace’. I’ve had these small hoops in the collection for a while, but forgot they existed so I bought more not very long ago and then promptly found the others. I hadn’t actually finished any yet, so now was the perfect time. I figured out how big the embroidery could be (14 by 14 stitches in the circle) and went on to look for ‘alpha patterns’. I think they are used for friendship bracelets, but it works well for cross stitch too.
The pattern I used was of a little penguin and made by RIVAI. You can find it here. I added some extra stitches to the bottom to fill the frame. I only used four colours, but they were very effective. The black penguin has a white belly, an orange beak and a light blue background. It’s just that little bit derpy that it becomes adorable. It also makes me think of the Pengu cartoon penguin, so that brings much joy!
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