Puppy in a stocking Christmas card

The pattern calls this on “Puppy”, I went a bit more descriptive. This card is part of the 1988 series of Christmas cards that seemingly no one made until recently. I received this one stitched, but not assembled last year from someone and then received a brand new unopened kit. It’s cute so I decided to go ahead and make it.

This one was a lot more detailed than I expected. It took around 10 hours to complete. I think around 7 of those were stitching, the remaining 3 hours was backstitching. I can’t believe it took so long!

Above is just the stitching, before the details were added.

Assembly was pretty easy since the aperture card came with the kit. Just needed double sided tape to hold everything together.

Stitching

Started: April 9th

Finished: April 30th

Stitching time: 10 hours

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Noel

This card took a really long time. I started it and then life took a very different turn than expected. It drove my desire to do anything right out the window. After a few months I was finally willing to pick this back up again, to get it finished. It’s time to move onto something else.

This card is part of a set from the late 1980s. I still have about 5 of them left. This was the easiest pattern from the set. Even with the design being simple, if you start counting the rows of colors in the gradient, you’ll find they are not all correct. 🤫

Once I found the mistakes, I decided to run with it as is. Giving this piece a unique look since it no longer matches the pattern.

Assembly was straightforward. Some double sided tape and everything else was already provided with the kit. As with many of these “smaller” patterns, I am amazed how many hours it actually takes to finish.

Stitching

Started: October 16th

Finished: March 5th

Stitching time: 8.25 hours

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2022 Cards

If you don’t want to read the nuances about the cards I created in 2022, this is where you can see them all by month of creation. Regardless of life circumstances I was determined to get some cards made.

Hope this provides some inspiration for your own cards!

February

May

June

July

September

October

December

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Make Your Own Kind of Music

I wanted to make sure I had plenty of time to finish this one before my friend turned the big 4-0, in November. Clearly I was on top of it with plenty of time to spare.

I’m writing this in late July and you will be seeing this in November. I don’t want to share it early even though I’ll be sending it in a few days.

My friend is not only an amazing photographer and writer, she also has a passion for music. I found this pattern on dailycrossstitch.com and just had to make it for her.

I did a little modification of the pattern. For the arrows I used variegated thread to add some dimension. I also added backstitching around the word music. It wasn’t standing out enough against the lines.

I used a purple sparkle paper for the frame and cut it out with my Cricut. The back of the cross stitch is stabilized with interfacing fabric.

Stitching

Started: March 30

Finished: April 10th

Stitching time: 11.25 hours

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50 You Are

My brother turned 50 this month and is a lifelong Star Wars fan. Since this is a milestone birthday I decided to make a custom Yoda themed Star Wars card.

I sketched out a few ideas for this one. The wording was the hard part. Thankfully lots of people are Star Wars fans and I knew one of them had to have a “Yoda translator” and I was right. To get the translator to work, you need a decent number of words. After a few attempts I came up with something that I liked.

For the fonts, I have a couple of Star Wars options that I downloaded from dafont years ago. One has mostly letters and the other character and ship outlines. I found Yoda and got to work.

After laying it out I decided to fill the white space between the text with the rebel symbol. Behind that and Yoda I put in a couple of pages from my old daily calendar. Yoda is mounted with some mounting tape to give dimension.

Assembly on this one was challenging! I have not mastered transfer tape. In my case press n seal, so maybe it’s not as stable to work with. I ended up laying out all the letters by hand. Once I reached happy birthday I was determined to use the press n seal. It wasn’t perfect, but it is straighter than what I was able to do free hand.

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Noel Candle II

I made this kit in 2021 and ended up getting another one. It’s a kit from 1988. Everything comes ready to make the card, including the envelope.

The last version of this card ended up going to my uncle for Christmas. This one will be going with all my cards to a friend’s craft fair booth.

It’s a straight forward pattern, only a few quarter stitches sprinkled in. French knots in metallic thread is the challenge with this pattern. Looks awesome when done, but not easy getting there. Metallic thread makes me nervous I guess. I can have very dry hands and pick that stuff up and I’m sweating like crazy and the thread just frays. I ran it through thread magic several times which kept it together a little longer this time.

I do struggle with picking which color to work on each time I finish a general area. There is a fair amount of “confetti” in this one. To keep stitches consistent a little planning is needed.

Stitching

Started: September 16th

Finished: October 8th

Stitching time: 7.75 hours

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Rocking Horse

This pattern is from a 1988 card kit. The pattern is hand drawn! I can’t imaging having to draw out patterns by hand. Sometimes advancements in technology are great.

Compared to the last several projects this one was easy. Mostly because the pattern was bigger than the actual design.

Well I thought it was easy until I started stitching. Then it took longer than expected to complete. There are several color changes and backstitching tends to take longer I think.

I have no idea what my deal is with metallic thread. I get all sweaty when it’s time to use it and that’s the worst time to have sweaty hands. By the second strand I was running it through Thread Magic at least 3 times to try and keep it together (usually it frays really bad). The extra coatings did help.

Since this is part of a kit, assembly went smoothly. Double sided tape to hold the aperture card together.

Stitching

Started: August 7th

Finished: September 4th

Stitching time: 7 hours

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70 is 13 in Scrabble

In a panic I realized my mother in laws birthday was a little under 2 weeks away. I had all these ideas for gifts months ago and decided it was too early to start. Now it’s a bit too late.

What sparked my memory was a box of sandpaper and little wooden squares my mom had me make for her friends who were turning 70 and 80 years old. She found a card idea on Pinterest and asked if I could make the letters with my Cricut and if my husband could cut out the squares.

I still had leftover squares from the flurry of birthdays and got them out to start my own card. Since my mom didn’t take a photo of her cards, she told me to head over to Pinterest to see what these cards looked like. I took it from there and made my own version of the card.

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Wrapping Bear

This cross stitch pattern is from a 1992 kit that was supposed to be made into an ornament. The design is by Celia Lange.

This pattern is riddled with 1/4 and technically 3/4 stitches. Since I knew there was so much backstitching I have learned that skipping the 3/4 stitches is better if backstitching is going through it.

Instead of following the pattern completely, I used quarter and whole stitches. This helped guide where the backstitching was going and not overwhelm the pattern.

This kit came with 18 count fabric which made it more challenging than most. It took several long breaks between stitching sessions to get this one done due to all the quarter stitches.

To finish this one I found simple paper in one of the Christmas paper packs. There is green in the cross stitch and green dots on the paper. Since there is text stitched I didn’t use any stamps or writing, just the pattern.

The cross stitch is stabilized with interfacing fabric and mounted with mounting tape. The paper is mounted to the card based with double sided tape.

Stitching

Started: June 1

Finished: July 17

Stitching time: 5.25 hours

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Old Fashioned Santa

This cross stitch pattern is from a 1988 kit that was supposed to be made into an ornament. The design is by Lois Winston.

The design and stitching were simple which was nice. A little backstitching was involved too.

I wasn’t sure how to finish this one. I have a set of Christmas paper that looks “antique.” I found a page with old world Santa’s that match the cross stitch. Well, with one major difference, they are walking the opposite direction of each other. Even so, I went forward with using it.

Since there are so many Santa’s on the paper I decided to make it the background. The cross stitch is stabilized with interfacing fabric and mounted with mounting tape.

Stitching

Started: May 24

Finished: May 31

Stitching time: 2.5 hours

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