Craft Gossip

Independent craft blog since 2007

Glass Art History Lesson – Corning Museum of Glass

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a cuneiform tablet

I blog about glass related events and places to go but I haven’t written much about glass art history. I’d like to present a posting ocsasionally on an aspect of how we got to this place with glass. Who first discovered how to melt glass and why. Take out a little mystery…I’ve been to the Corning Museum of Glass and felt rather insignificant when looking at ancient glass work. We are so privileged to have the technology and equipment that we have at our disposal.

Our first trip down history lane is to Mesopotamia where it’s possible the first glass was made accidently while smelting copper about 40 centuries ago. But check out the article on the Musuem’s site as well as their other historical information. It’s fascinating.

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Cross Stitch Cards for All Occasions

I have never stitched a greeting card, but I kind of like the idea of it. It’s a card and a gift all in one, and hopefully one the recipient will hang onto for years to come. 

This collection of easy and colorful greeting card cross stitch patterns from Susan Bates (via Gathered) are a great place to start if you want to stitch your own greeting cards. 

These text-based designs cover a lot of card-sending events, such as:

  • get well soon
  • happy birthday
  • thank you
  • thinking of you
  • congratulations
  • anniversary
  • new home
  • good luck

The lettering is done in gradients and there are other details like hearts and stars, a house key and a gift, depending on the text. There are full cross stitches and back stitch on all of the cards, and they use 15 colors for the cross stitching and six for the back stitching (and just two colors are used for both, so it’s 19 colors total). 

The designs vary a bit in size but the biggest one is 52 by 67 stitches, which comes out to 3.75 by 4.75 inches or 9.5 by 12 cm when worked on 14 count fabric or 28 count evenweave. The text suggests beads are also used in the patterns but there’s no note of them in the key, so go wild and add some beads if you like. 

Designs are worked on a price of 6 by 8 inch/15 by 20 cm fabric and then mounted to a card with a colorful baking piece of card stock behind it. This is easy to assemble with whatever cardstock greeting cards you have on hand.

You can get the free charts as a PDF from Gathered. 

Have you ever stitched your own greeting cards? I’d love to hear about it, or let me know if these inspire you to try. 

[Photo: Susan Bates via Gathered]