Guest Post from Craft Mummy!

Hi! I'm CraftyMummy. Thanks for inviting me, Jen!

I "met" Jen through the SITS community 

and was so impressed with her Perler bead art.

It reminded me a little of the cross stitch I do

so I thought I'd share some basics with you.

Cross stitch is easy. Yes, really!

It's just a whole bunch of little crosses.

But it can look really detailed once you get 

a lot of different colours in your design.

That's what gives you the shading.

These sea creatures are stitched on dark blue Aida cloth.

Aida cloth has a nice even weave that creates little squares

which makes it easy to stitch your crosses on.

You can get Aida cloth in different "counts"

which is how many threads per inch.

The lower the count number, the bigger the little squares.

So if you're new to stitching go for a lower count like 14

- it'll be a little easier to see your squares!

Sometimes you don't stitch crosses but just "half" crosses.

See the green grass above?

Those stitches all go one way without 

the stitch back the other way to create the cross.

These give a different texture in the picture.

Leaving spaces around the cross stitches gives texture too.

This peacock is stitched on linen so you can hardly see the little squares.

Most of it was stitched over two threads in the linen

but the golden gate section was stitched with tiny crosses over just one thread.

It creates a really fine texture.

Here's the other peacock in that picture.

There are little blue seed beads stitched on the tail

after the crosses were all stitched.

The charts I use for cross stitch are grids 

like the charts Jen uses for her Perler beads.

So you could take a Perler bead chart, 

grab some embroidery thread, needle and Aida cloth

and stitch a cross stitch to match your beads!

I hope I've given you some inspiration.

If you want to see the whole pictures that these sample pictures came from 

you'll find them over on my blog, Mummy Crafts:

The sea scape

The teddy bears

The peacocks