Craft focus: Cross-stitch

Over the last few years I have picked up a lot of crafts as hobbies. You’ve seen me dabble with crochet and amigurumi, but I also love cross-stitch!

I first got into cross-stitch when I found this amazing cross-stitch designer called Jody Rice of Satsuma Street on Etsy. I love her Pretty Little City series – they’re so modern and colourful, and feature city landmarks in each design. I did Pretty Little Amsterdam and gifted it to one of my friends for his wedding in 2016. I loved doing it but I’m not gonna lie, it took me ages (3 months actually), and I really hurt my neck in the process which put me off cross-stitch for ages…

Then I found The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery which designs the cutest kawaii cross-stitches ever! I joined their Pumpkin Passport monthly stitch-along – it’s a fun concept where they only release a small part of the overall pattern each month, and you are supposed to complete it that month ready for the next, so that by the end of 12 months, tada! You have a finished project! Well, in theory that’s how it’s supposed to work… unfortunately, not for me… Here is my sad little WIP… I haven’t even finished January yet!

And this is what it’s supposed to look like…

I do plan to finish it… but I have a bigger project that I want to work on. This one is a monster size cross-stitch – A3 size. It’s a picture of the Chinese “Goddess of Mercy”, Guan Yin and I’m making it for my mum. She knows about it but she’s probably forgotten because I’ve had the kit for about 3 years now… but I really want to finish it by Christmas so that I can give it to her as a Christmas present!

It’s quite a tough cross-stitch, lots of colour changes and counting, counting, counting all the time so I’ve found it quite hard to get into. I also started it using a hoop but all the fabric just got in the way and made progress super-slow. But now I have mounted it onto a bigger frame and that made it much easier!

The next thing was to find a comfortable stitching position. As I mentioned before, I really hurt my neck and shoulders the last time I tried to tackle cross-stitch long-term. By accident, I found that the cross-stitch frame can stand in the holes of my radiator and becomes free-standing! That position was almost perfect – but I still had to crane my neck a little bit…

Then, I had a brainwave! I found some unused magazine files and found that they can prop up the frame at the perfect angle at the table – with a space underneath so you can have one hand underneath! So no need to buy a floor stand! Hopefully I can make faster progress now and save my neck.

I’ve got a really long way to go, but I’ll be posting regular updates on my progress from now, so please subscribe if you want to see how I get along! All support is much appreciated!

Have you got a big craft project that you’re working on? Let me know in the comments!