Lpanne & Cross Stitch

My sister-in-law asked me to make a stocking for her nephew. I talked to the parents and they wanted a winter mountain scene for their son. I then bought two patterns to build this stocking.

Winter landscape cross stitch pattern by SoEasyPattern on etsy

and

Winter cross stitch pattern by AuthorEmbroideDesign on etsy.

First go to Utilities > Symbol Editor (PDF symbol Editor looks cool but i haven't played around with it yet.

You should then have a screen with the symbol that is the first in the list to be edited. There is only black and erase, and the select option doesn't let you paste anymore for some reason. but you can hand draw symbols. (give yourself a lot of white area. i think minimum what i'm showing here

Hit the save button when you are done editing, then select a new symbol by clicking on the button surrounded by the red box.

All designs are on 10 count plastic canvas and cut so that they are 34 holes wide and tall.

DMC Tapestry Wool: BLANC, 7605, and 716

Red lines show where to split the lines as you can see in the final coaster. DMC Tapestry Wool: 701, 702, 709, 7020. Do not use these colors, especially 7020, it was too cool toned for everything else. I should have used 707, 708, 701, 7435, i just thought those purples were too pink but it still looks better than the colors i used. See suggested alternative pattern below for if you buy the two multipacks i bought (Tropical and Classic Collections).

reminder on how to read these patterns as i'm not using the correct notation:

I just want to celebrate also how all 9 look together! still don't know what i'm going to do with the final 3 small squares but i'll figure something out.

All designs are on 10 count plastic canvas and cut so that there are 34 holes wide and tall.

DMC Tapestry Wool: 7740, 702, 707, 7605 and Ecru (i was running out of Blanc, I can't really tell the difference between them anyways)

DMC Tapestry Wool: 722, 723, 7317, 716, Ecru. Black lines in the pattern show where to split the lines as you can see in the final coaster.

DMC Tapestry Wool: 706, 709, 7317

Again an explanation on how to read the patterns:

All designs are on 10 count plastic canvas and cut so that there are 34 holes wide and tall.

DMC Tapestry Wool: Noir, Blanc, 7275, and 708

DMC Tapestry Wool: Noir, Blanc, 7275, 7770 and 722

DMC Tapestry Wool: Noir, Blanc, 7275, 722 and 708. (This one i should have cut down to be 33 x 33 but i wanted all my coasters to be the same size)

These are a little more complicated designs using Bargello as you aren't doing just doing straight lines of stitching. I wanted to try some more difficult patterns and when i saw a flag for the Asexual spectrum i felt like it was perfect to try the 4-way Bargello.

Again as a reminder of on how to read the top pattern:

the ones were i'm literally drawing the lines doesn't have this issue but i don't want to go back and redraw the top pattern as drawing with backstitch takes so much time!

So i'm trying a new type of embroidery which is called Bargello embroidery. I saw this video and decided to try it

So i wanted to share the pitfalls i found as a cross stitcher while trying to learn this technique.

First, there are very few free resources for Bargello. There are some but compared to what is available for cross-stitch there is nothing. I did find a couple of blogs, and i found that a lot of needlepoint or embroidery books had a couple of pages about it, but those patterns were super basic)

Second the embroidery is on a grid and that lured me in with a false sense of security when trying to design a pattern. I cut a bunch of perfect squares out of 10 count plastic canvas and then set my pattern up as a grid. This was a mistake as i will try to explain in the diagram below.

basically if you cut your canvas square the design dimensions will be the number of openings in the width x that number minus one.

So not knowing this i designed a square pattern and ran out of room on the blue complete row to go over four strands like every other color and had to do three instead. (I started at the top and bottom separately and worked towards the middle, which lead to me realizing my issue only at the very end.

The pattern i'm sharing will assume you cut you canvas 34 holes wide and 35 tall. If you want a perfectly square coaster just make one color shorter like i did or cut off a row at the top or bottom of the pattern.

I used DMC's Tapestry Wool on 10 count plastic canvas.

Colors: 704, 7740, 7435, 7770 (probably should have used the 722 that came in the same pack though, but i'm using that one in a different design and was worried it would run out), 7317 and 709.

I couldn't buy the colors individually so i bought both the Tropical and Classic Collections. This dictated the colors i used and i'm not claiming the are the best colors to use for pride flag colors. Also these collections were $20 for 12 skeins which i thought was a bit steep so i waited for good discounts before buying them. I'm hoping to get another 50% off coupon before buying the collection that is all black so i can finish the edges with an overcast stitch.

So look forward to me designing a bunch of pride flag inspired bargello patterns.

The card i made for Mother's Day. I forgot again to take a pic before putting it in the envelope so thanks mom for sending me the photo.

Done! only took about 16 weeks (I would have been faster if i hadn't had to frog so much). I don't know what to do with myself now.