[Image description: three pieces of Rice Chex cereal in a row, with an eighth note, a pine tree, and a lab flask with blue contents cross-stitched on them. Underneath is a shot of the three pieces flipped over, showing some black thread ends, some green and black thread ends, and no ends at all.]
I have been meaning to try stitching on Chex ever since I first saw that one letters-on-cereal image, years ago, and today when I went to have breakfast i decided to just.. do it. It's honestly pretty easy! (Happy to give tips if anyone wants them.)
The music note was my first attempt and the tree my second, because I haven't seen anyone do multiple colors and backstitch, though probably someone has before me. After doing those two I felt confident I could manage a no-show back, so I did one more with about as polished design as a single Chex piece can really have -- full crosses, half crosses, backstitch, and an underwoven glass-shine. The floss all came from my scrap pile, so no idea of the colors.
These were designed and stitched last year as host gifts, for three siblings who graciously lent me their couch and showed me around town while I was in the area. <3 Each person's biscornu was customized to their interests, and I was aiming for a balance of symmetry and visual variety.
Technical stuff and fancy pictures by @mathysphere under the cut!
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).
All in all, a fun little set of decorations! Miniaturizing things is way more fun than it has any right to be. <3
I have not had a lot of time for stitching of late, thanks to a mix of my own choices, work projects, and general tiredness/burnout, but have a roundup post of everything y'all haven't seen since last September! It’s mostly cross-stitch, with a few art pieces at the end.
There won’t be proper image descriptions, just keywords; I’m sorry to those who use them but I just do not have that many words in me. =( If anyone would like more information on a specific piece, though, by all means please send me an ask and I’ll be happy to do that for you! Answering an ask is much easier for my brain than posting from scratch.
The first two images are stitchbits from my Jan 2024 winter cards, which go to select family members and close friends+coworkers.
Color-variant poinsettia triplets and five dessert-inspired patterned hearts:
Domestic rabbit, stylized poinsettia, dragonfly creek, and elegant cat:
Next up are a variety of other-cardified stitchbits. On top, an eclipse for Mother's Day plus a pi pie and fossil for (Grand)Father's Day, all from @mathysphere's patterns. On bottom from a variety of places, a lavender bunch birthday card, a blue blossom wedding card, and a blue bird w/beads for another birthday card.
The rest of the stitching is some misc stitchbits, many embellished with beads: golden retriever, tiny pink bird, cardinal, galaxy pi (also from @mathysphere!), assissi flower, heart of roses, blackwork window cat, snowy pine, and antique evergreen.
Last up are the art pieces -- two watercolor versions of a picture of the Sandias (included for reference), and a tiny marker coloring of Dale Ray Deforest's Perry Rodent lineart from my Bubonicon badge.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for looking! Please feel free to ask me about any of these, and as always I hope you’re doing ok out there. For those of you in the US, check your voter registration status and please do make sure you've got a plan in place to vote in November. <3
It's been quite a while, but I'm still alternating a large self-patterned project and @mathysphere samplers as I have time! First up was my version of the Ocean sampler, and now the Autumn sampler has joined the completion pile. As with the ocean one, i did a bonus variation on one of the squares for 17 pieces total.
Technical details under the cut, for those of you interested in such things.
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. ^_^
Bonus campfire: The campfire was my favorite square of the sampler, and I had a scrap of mottled dark brown fabric sitting around, so I decided to stitch it again! I could not be bothered to dig out waste canvas; instead I just slapped some of the light brown evenweave onto the back of it with a running stitch and worked right through both. Some of the stitches in the center are a little wonky as a result (parallels to the bookmark, Geri! haha) but it came out pretty well! I do wish I'd thought to stitch the middle of the flames in three strands instead of two, to get more intensity of color, but the visible Xs are fun too! The only changes I made from the pattern were leaving off the black background and using black for the border instead of dark red.
There were a few occasions that called for stitchcards this spring, and now that all of them have been received I can share them here! First up is a birthday card, and there are also three cards for Mother's and Father's Day below the cut.
(Details and more cards below the read-more.)
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.
Thanks for looking! I don't find as much time for stitching as I used to, but I am still working on samplers and my large project as I can. I've also got some travel projects lined up for when I go on vacation, so we shall see how much of that I get through! Once fall comes around I'll be putting the ongoing projects on hold to work on winter cards.
Any attempt at activity here continues to feel like pulling teeth with all the intrusive dash changes lately, but for the record: I did a thing. Details on Ao3, happy to talk about it in the comments there!
I recently started a self-patterned project that is larger than I usually work, and in order to avoid burnout I’m alternating it with @mathysphere samplers -- in card-sized pieces, as is my habit! First up was the Ocean sampler, because I just barely had enough blue scraps for it and I didn’t want to accidentally use them for something else. I also did a bonus navy edition of the tenth one, which I think looks really neat! My goal is to do two hours on the big project for every sampler stitchbit, and I am currently right on track at 34 hours.
Fun tidbit: I got to show @tkingfisher the whale fall one during CrossingsCon! Due to the combination of Ursula being a guest at the convention at the same time as I got to the final piece of the sampler, her whale fall acceptance speech was hovering in the back of my mind every time I worked on it. xD
Technical details under the cut, for those of you interested in such things.
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.
Bonus jellyfish: Last but not least, I used a 14ct faded navy scrap for the glowy version of the jellyfish! The fabric was very stiff and felt a little weirdly coated with something; it’s one of the perils of using random scraps picked up from wherever! I’m quite pleased with how it looks though. All thread colors are exactly the same as the original jellyfish, including the brown border, so the only difference is the fabric.
