Craft Gossip

Independent craft blog since 2007

Handmade Brigade – CA

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The one and only HandMade Brigade Indie Craft Show is back again! For those of you who don’t know the Brigade, you’re in for a wild ride. They will be showcasing 30+ of the greatest talent in DIY/indie crafts. Their emerging designers are doing their very best to push the envelope for your shopping pleasure.

Their next show is June 27th at the Laguna Niguel Tall Mouse Craft Store from 10am-4pm. And as if the vendors themselves weren’t enough, admission is free, there will still be grab bags for the first 50 die hard fans of the HB, free refreshments and music.

Another new facet of the HandMade Brigade Indie Craft Show is that the Orange County Handmade Brigade (A brand new renegade craft club) is working behind the scenes to make sure that the show is a major success.

Handmade Brigade
Tall Mouse Arts and Crafts
Saturday, June 27, 2009  10AM-4PM
23932 Aliso Creek Road. Laguna Niguel, CA 92677


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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]