Last summer I fell in love with cross stitching-again! I say again because this has been one of my hobbies since I was a little girl. My grandma and my aunt taught me and my cousin to cross stitch when we were very young, basically as a way to keep us entertained in the hot summer days, when we were visiting them at our village.
My first projects were some pillows, they were sold as kits with the pattern printed on the fabric and all the thread we were going to need. I still remember the very first one, it was a duck in a pond, haha! I made so many of them! Some were turned into pillows for my bedroom, others were given to my grandparents as gifts and I also have a few unfinished projects at my mom’s attic.
Anyway, the weird thing is I had never stitched a counted pattern up until last year, when I started following a lovely lady on Instagram. She started posting about a Stitch Along she was taking part in, organised by Snowflowerdiares. The name of it was Joyful world and basically each month there was a free pattern to download and stitch.
I was so excited to try it, I went to the local haberdashery and picked everything I was gonna need for May’s pattern. This first pattern was turned into a frame and the other months where turned into huge pillows! I simply adore them! (If you wanna see how I make those pillows, there is a step by step tutorial at my other blog here).
This stitch along was the reason I started cross stitching again and one pattern per month was simply not enough. I started buying more patterns and thought I’d share a few of my favorite ones in this post.
Ok, first of all Maya’s blog, aka Snowflower Diaries has many free patterns to download. How amazing is that? I made several of them as you can see 🙂
Another place is Madame Chantilly. I found her shop on Etsy and purchased some designs. My favorite one is the babushkas, you can see it in all its glory (but still unfinished) on my video here.
I also got a design from Clouds Factory. This is a funny one, the Stark kids with their direwolfs. Both me and Dimitris are huge fans of Game of Thrones and this was a pillow I made for him. It’s now living in our living room sofa.
Last but not least is another Etsy shop called Cuore e batticuore. I haven’t stitched any of the patterns I got from them, basically because my hand gets sore from all the sewing I do everyday for my business so I had to minimize cross stitching for the past few months to give it a rest.
I still try to stitch as much as I can given the circumstances. I like hobbies you can take with you or you can do when sitting on thr couch watching a movie, because let’s be honest, some days you are just too tired to sit in front of the sewing machine or stand up cutting pieces for the next project after a long day at work.
I hope you enjoy these makes and that I gave you some inspiration to make something yourselves!
Keep making beautiful things,
Athina
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