Teeny Tiny Trilobites (Free Cross Stitch Pattern)

Hello all and welcome back! This is a project that, to my shame, I started three years ago and then promptly forgot in a corner of my sewing box... but what's a better lockdown activity than finishing old craft projects?

Presenting my teeny trilobites! These critters were once so prevalent that they're now excellent marker fossils for dating the surrounding rocks. (As much as I like how this turned out, I'm not sure I ever want to stitch on 28-count fabric again.)

These trilobite patterns were generously posted by Adventures in Stitching, so I decided to stick them together and add the genus names underneath for a little natural history style sampler:

Purple: 1100 stitches

Brown: 504 stitches

Total size: 95 x 55 stitches

Since I never actually buy proper DMC or Anchor colours, the colours I used were 'lavender' and 'dark brown', which I think look great in contrast to the off-white linen.

I hope you enjoyed this little make and it will inspire you to maybe try something a bit out of your crafty comfort zone.

Limpet x

 

Card Suits Cross Stitch Free Pattern

I had someone ask me for the pattern of the card suits I used in my Alice cross stitch which I'm happy to share. Like this person, I couldn't find any satisfactory patterns online, so I made them up.

Here they are:

I'd have no idea how to translate clubs or spades into corner squares...

Each card suit measures 9x9 stitches which makes them nice and easy to place in borders. The smaller squares in the rounded parts of the hearts, clubs, and spades show where to put your half cross stitches. I think they give a nice shape without having to make the design too big, as you can hopefully see below.

My first cross stitch... ah, the memories...

So there we are, card suits. Please use them as you wish!

Limpet x

Free Geometric Skull Cross Stitch Pattern

As a lil' sorry for it being a while since posting last, and because I've been meaning to do it for a while, I wanted to share my skull cross stitch with you along with a free pattern.

So this was the teaser I posted just before the new year, along with a filter-less photo of what it actually looked like. I decided a geometric rainbow border would contrast with the realism of the skull nicely, and designed it so it fits snugly inside a 6 inch frame.

I also think he'd look great with a wreath around him and a Christmas hat, but maybe that's just me! I kind of want to do one for each season of the year.

The pattern:

The pattern shown is 83 x 83 stitches, meaning that on 14 count aida it's almost exactly 6 x 6 inches. Of course you can adjust the border as you see fit, and I'm more than happy to assist if you'd like it in a different size and want some help.

In a black 8 inch frame with a black 6 inch border, under Alice on the living room wall. The angle is pretending to be artistic but really just avoiding the light reflection on the glass.

As someone who struggles to finish projects, I'm glad it's finally out and on display. I've actually been working on this for quite a while, but I lost my darker shade of grey and was forced to tidy the house to find it again!

Limpet x

Bad-Mannered Bookmarks

Everyone has those days, or those people, that just ruin your mood.

You may be familiar with Julie Jackson's subversive cross stitch, one of the first to lead cross-stitch astray by making it rude and snarky. It's an amazing form of art therapy and so I decided to make a bookmark of my own.

I sealed the edges with fire!

Stitching words takes so much longer than it takes to say them that in my mind, it transformed the venom into something more jovial. Now it's just a cheeky bookmark and a reminder that often it doesn't really matter if someone's trying to mess up your day, as long as you care enough about yourself to dismiss them.

Bad manners and bookmarks,
L

Your Father Smelt of Elderberries

It's been a while since I've done a new cross stitch, and I had this frame that needed filling. It's too large for a photograph, and I'd had my eye on this monty python cross stitch pattern because I love the font. I didn't have as much room as the pattern so I split the text up into three lines instead of two and added some different berries that filled up the empty space better. 

"Your mother was a hamster!"

Butterfly Box

First, I want to apologise for this Sunday post not being a Friday post. I tried my best but I was away from home and had bought the wrong camera cable with me. I don't know where this other cable came from, but it was one of those awful ones that are only for one thing and yet you have dozens of them. All the pictures were right there waiting but I couldn't get to them!

In absence of the photos for what I wanted to write about, and in keeping with it being Mother's Day recently, here's the birthday present that I gave my mum last year. It's a 15cm wooden cube with a photo on each face, except I did a little cross stitch for the lid.

A Spot of Blacksmithing

This post is more of a short and sweet 'Look what I made!' than anything else. You see that vicious looking hooked thing below? I made that with steel and fire and brute force. Well, maybe that's not completely truthful. My brother helped me to do it last week. He's training to be a blacksmith and he's set up a forge in the garden which is made out of a metal bin and a lot of coal and a air bed pump. 

It's a hook that can be hung over the tops of doors, for people like me who aren't allowed to drill holes in their walls. Could also be one half of a grappling hook, or a weapon for the impending zombie apocalypse.

Why Do Tigers Wear Stripes?

Because they don't want to be spotted!

Sometimes my favourite thing to do is curl up with a cup of tea and read a book, or work on a cross-stitch project. This is a little counted cross-stitch I've been working on that was a gift from Christmas. I like to do the black layer first as it's good for reference and it's much easier to get on with cross-stitch when you can actually see the progress you're making. This tiger cub has over 10 different shades of orange so it might become a bit of a grind later on, but he is very cute.

Tigers and tea-drinking,

L

"Alice: Madness Returns" Cross-Stitch

I will start by saying that every time I see this hanging on my boyfriend's wall I feel immensely satisfied. It's the first big cross-stitch project that I've finished and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. 

It's an A4 piece of Alice Liddell and the Cheshire cat from American McGee's game "Alice: Madness Returns" and I used a free program called cstitch to get the pattern. The backstitches, border, and text are all made up (it's surprisingly difficult to find a pattern for suits of cards.) The whole thing took about a month to do in the odd hours of me being alone and it was finished just in time to give away for Christmas (as in, I think I wrapped it up on the 24th.) The boyfriend loves this game and actually has a tattoo of Chesh so I think I did good. Here's a huge picture of it:

I framed it before giving it away, of course; I'm not some kind of monster.

Some close-ups of Chesh, the writing, and the backstitches used for Alice's face:

The text reads "How fine you look when dressed in rage. Your enemies are fortunate that your condition is not permanent." Because Chesh is pretty bad-ass.

However, the only problem is... what if I have to match this level of effort every time?

Sew long, suckers.
L