Stitching with Susan, Part 3

We’re back with the final installment of Stitching with Susan! We hope that you’ll join us in a HUGE round of applause:). Thank you so much, Susan, for sharing your stitchy knowledge with us. We certainly feel armed and ready for some cross stitch greatness!!

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It’s Susan Ache, yardgrl60 on Instagram, back again to talk Christmas.

I’ve been here before talking about cross stitch, my favorite kinds of stitching, floss choices, and being a rebel with your own stitching. Well, today I’m here to show you my newest box of designer colors for Christmas. I even designed a small Quaker Sampler Christmas chart for you to play with.

Let’s talk my choices of colors, how to go about deciding the fabric for your stitching, and how to calculate how much you need.

These colors were truly an easy choice for me, they combine my favorite reds and greens with a gold and a dash of pink to make my Christmas stitching happy. The stitching project was a joy to design because I was able to combine some wonderful motifs, a bit of of alphabet, and some definite Christmas spirit to this.

Let’s talk size of design. This design is 100 stitches wide by 80 stitches high. Why is that important? Well, you need to know how much fabric to buy. I have said before that 36ct linen is my favorite stitching fabric so let’s do the math. I stitch over 2 threads which means I need to divide my stitches into the entire design size. So, half of 36 (remember over 2) is 18 into 100 is about 5.5 inches, that’s my finished design width. The height is 18 into 80 which is about 4.4 inches high. To make sure I have enough for framing or any other sort of project, I will give myself at least 3 inches all the way around this finished piece. So, I need to cut my linen about 11.5 inches by 10.5 inches.

I do know that not all people love to stitch on the size linen I do, so that is why your stitch count is important to know when selecting your own stitching fabric. How about we do another math with this same project size? Let’s pretend you want to stitch this project on a 28ct linen, well, I am sure you are going to be stitching over 2, so take that 28 in half is 14. Divide 14 into the 100 for the width and then divide into the 80 for the height. I came up with approximately 7.1 x 5.7 inches, for my final design area, did you? So, if it was me, I would cut my 28ct linen about 13 x 12.

If you are not stitching over 2 linen threads, then all you do is divide your linen count into the stitch count and you have your measurements. Make sure in all of your stitching that you do give yourself enough space all the way around to insure framing or any other project you want to include this in.

I hope that you love my Christmas colors as much as I do and will enjoy stitching the chart. Even if cross stitch isn’t your prefered hand work I certainly hope that they bring happiness to any project that you have in your lap for stitching.

Until next time, happy stitching…
Susan

THREAD COLLECTION DETAILS
Little Quaker Christmas
100% Aurifil Cotton, 10 Large Spools, Aurifloss (18yds/spool)
Colors included:
1231 – 2886 – 1147 – 5016 – 2140
2420 – 5002 – 2255 – 2270 – 2250