#dd makes things

General info: Each biscornu has a more detailed 'front' side and a simpler 'back' side. The fabric I stitched on is an 18ct fiddler's aida; in retrospect some of the details would have been cleaner on 14ct, but so it goes. The final squares measured in at 3.5in to a side. All the panel stitching was a baby blue palette of 3756, 3752, 799, and 797 DMC floss, and the seam whipstitching was done with 3781 DMC to match the brown ribbon hangers. I used scraps from an old blue shirt to stuff them, and translucent white buttons + brown beads to secure the classic center pinch.

Avian Art:

The recipient of this one is a painter and associated with birds, so those were the themes I went with. The front side, art themed, alternates paintbrushes and palette knives to divide the piece into quadrants. The corners then alternate palettes with paint dollops and canvases on easels, complete with paint drops below; the canvases have a flower closeup and a mountain landscape. On the back side, bird themed, I opted for identical air swirl dividers but a different silhouette in each corner. The flying hummingbird and parrot both got a small trail of feathers, and the perched cardinal and songbird got a branch full of berries and a pile of seeds respectively.

Caffeinated Chronicles:

The recipient of this one is a writer and a coffee fiend! The front side is word themed, with feather pens and modern cap pens as dividers. The corners alternate piles of books and computers, complete with french-knot keyboards and (unreadable) text on the screens. On the caffeine side, I skipped the dividers to have room for a large "mm..." with a steaming mug and pile of coffee beans in each corner. The mugs and beans have the same shape in each case, but all four mugs have a different pattern.

Delicate Designs:

Last but not least, the @mathysphere biscornu! The front side, cross-stitch themed, is divided by pairs of scissors (specifically Gingher 4" Large Handle Embroidery Scissors, because that's what I use x3) and skeins of embroidery floss (modeled after DMC floss) with wound bobbins and needles. The corners have alternating square and circle cross-stitch designs. Specifically, the squares are tiny monochrome versions of Geri's "Geology Rock Collection" and "Chemistry Sampler" patterns, with "Parasaurolophus" in an embroidery hoop as the circular pattern between them. The final corner, also a tiny embroidery hoop, has an unspecified cross-stitch design in progress (stitched four to an 18ct square) with a parked needle. This was definitely the most complex piece of the lot! I had a lot of fun condensing the given patterns down into such a small size though, and I'm thrilled with how recognizable they all are. ^_^ On the back side, I went for complete symmetry to balance the visual complexity of alternating dragon fractals and bees on honeycomb (with bonus dance lines out to tiny flowers).

The fabric I used for these was a 28ct evenweave in a muted light brown, stitching two over two. Since I was doing them as individual squares rather than one full piece, I did the borders in backstitch rather than cross-stitch to let the designs shine! I did not bother to keep track of the orientation for each fabric scrap as i went, which is why some are a smidge taller and some a smidge wider. Evenweaves be like that sometimes.

First row: owl, mushrooms, goose, moon All of these were stitched as given, nothing particular to add here! The moon is my favorite of the row. <3

Second row: apples, pumpkin pie, black walnuts, squirrel This row got a few changes. The apples were patterned with a sky-blue background, which I left off and later gave to the squirrel instead. The light brown of the squirrel's body was too close to the fabric color to stand out the way it needed to without some help. I also worked the pie border from the reverse side, to give it a thicker line since it was such a light color (plus a bonus fancy-crust twisted effect).

Third row: produce crates, grasshopper, icy leaf, pumpkin patch This row was also stitched as given. I love the leaf one, but bonus points to the pumpkin patch for feeling particularly fairy-tale!

Fourth row: preserves, campfire, deer, hedgehog This set got a bit of extra backstitch -- I outlined the lids on the preserves jars, and also the hedgehog's face. In both cases, my fabric color was just close enough to the floss colors to muddle things. I very deliberately did not outline the deer, though -- it seemed so much more fitting that they would blend into the background a bit, as they always did in the woods where I grew up. ^_^

This one was for a friend who turned 40 this year! I opted for the evolution animation from Pokemon Emerald purely for visual interest, since both of us were first-gen kids. In addition to cropping the aspect ratio down and inputting his name, I went with a green gradient since that's his favorite color. I also chose Rapidash specifically because it evolves at level 40, and of course went with the shiny form! (This is exactly the kind of pointless relevant details I include in my personalized stuff, haha.) The silhouette would be all-white if I was staying true to the game, but for clarity's sake I tinted the flames blue and used a very light gray to outline some features. It was stitched one over on a 36ct pale green evenweave, using the basketweave tent stitch technique/petit point.

This one was my Mother's Day card for the year, as my mom likes lighthouses. The pattern was in my stash but does not have identifying information -- it might have been pulled out of a kit? It's one piece of a larger composition, in any case, and was mostly stitched as given. I did clean up the edges and some of the backstitch though, and blend out the sky a bit with a combination of different strand counts and half stitches. The backstitched words were also added, rather last-minute in fact! It's stitched two over two (mostly) on a 32ct linen.

For Father's Day I went with another piece of the sea set, a brown pelican for the beach town my dad's extended family lives near. This section was patterned larger, but I cropped the sides down until it was the same size as the lighthouse one and again added words. It's on the same 32ct linen, and has similar variations in strand count + stitch type in the sky for blending purposes. The inside of the card had a strip of silver-foil and blue ocean waves washi tape all the way across the bottom, rough seas to contrast with the safe harbor on the front.

Last but not least, I pulled one more piece from the sea set for my grandpa for Father's Day. No particular reasoning behind the choice other than that it's nice to look at and not as dependent on small details. though seahorses are somewhat famous when it comes to parenting since it's the male that gets pregnant. Like the other two i stitched it two over two on 32ct linen, with no significant changes to the pattern. I finished the edges the same as the lighthouse and pelican, just folded over with a backstitch outline to secure the fold, but for this one I also whipped the backstitch with one of the grey-greens to soften it out and add a teeny bit of texture.

As mentioned, I was working with just whatever blue scraps I happened to have in my stash, so my options were a little more limited than I’d hoped.  In particular, the top row is a touch lighter than I would have chosen, and I would have liked to have four colors, for a more proper gradient effect from top to bottom.  That said, I was mostly just happy I had enough to do them all, and even each row one consistent color!

First row: crashing wave, playing dolphins, breaching ray, splashing gull. The fabric here is a very pale blue aida, 14ct.  Everything was stitched as given in the pattern, but I did end up adding a subtle tent stitch fill to the sky on the gull one, to help those bright white wings be visible.  I wanted to use up some of my orphan thread pile for the outlines on the whole set, and to my delight I had some blue that matched perfectly for this row so that was the obvious choice.

Second row: coral reef, whale and baby, fish swarm, seal in kelp. This fabric is a grey-blue linen, 32ct, and you may notice that I was not paying attention to the orientation each time I grabbed a new piece!  Linen is a little tricky because even ‘evenweave’ linens may not be precisely the same count vertically and horizontally, and that’s especially visible with small pieces like this.  Everything here was also stitched as given (over two), and the border color for this row is a muted purple because I didn’t have any green in the orphan pile.

Third row: hungry clams, jellyfish, lanternfish, hermit crab. Same fabric as the second row.  You might notice that the first in the row is a little mottled in comparison to the rest; this was mostly intentional!  After an accidental encounter with some fabric glue, I noticed that the linen held onto it more visibly than my more usual fabrics, and decided to lean into it as ‘background detritus’.  I do wish this row could have been on a slightly darker fabric for the sake of the jellyfish, mostly, but I made up for that with the bonus navy jellyfish at the bottom!  This row got a warm brown border to match the hermit crab’s shell.

Fourth row: giant squid, angler fish, tube worms, whale fall. This darker blue fabric is another linen, a 28ct this time, and you can see around the edges that the color is a bit lighter inside the weave than on the surface.  Once again I failed to coordinate my orientation, so there are some pieces that are wider and others that are taller.  All of these were stitched as given with the exception of the angler fish, where I swapped out the blues for 813 and 826 to better match my fabric.  This row got red outlines, carefully patched together from a few different red variegation orphans.