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Mosaic in South Los Angeles

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This piece was created by Jose Robelo

It’s so inspring to see glass enrich the lives of people who wouldn’t necessarily be exposed to it. A really wonderful organization called Piece by Piece is bringing glass mosaic and other techniques of how to create with glass to low-income and homeless people. They are teaching the techniques as well as how to sell and market their work. I recently went to a class in South LA to see what was up. It was incredible. I saw the most amazing work! The fish mosaic pictured above was one of the pieces I just fell in love with. Another piece with a parrot as it’s focal was just awesome. 3D and everything…

This was created by Hugo Sulecio.

This was created by Hugo Sulecio.

Please excuse my hand. I love this piece! So cool. The story of the founding of the organization can be read on their web site at http://www.piecebypiece.org. I was enlightened about Piece by Piece by my good friend Leigh Adams, who teaches with them as well as a number of other facilities and schools. Through her I was able to donate a bunch of my scrap glass to Piece by Piece. Now it’s being used in ways I wouldn’t have necessarily have used it for. And the good thing is that I keep making more scrap for them. I will post updates and other information about this great group every now and then. There’s so much good to say!

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Christmas Ornament Cross Stitch Patterns

The other day I shared some cross stitch patterns with ornaments on them, so this time around I wanted to share cross stitch patterns that you can use as ornaments. It would be fun to do a whole tree in your craft room with cross stitch ornaments, or just add a few to your tree or give them as gifts.

These little quilt inspired cross stitch patterns from Flamingo Toes look like ornaments and fit in 3-inch hoops, which are perfect for hanging on the tree or using to decorate a gift. I love the pastel colors on these but you can use more traditional Christmas colors if you like.

This cute Christmas tree from Lagodargetoshop uses a single color and fits in a 4-inch hoop, but you could make it smaller if you wanted by trimming the last ornaments and gifts from the sides, or just stitch the tree without any other embellishments. Either way it’s a cute addition to your holiday tree.

Stitched Modern has a super cute collection of retro Christmas ornament cross stitch patterns from designer Gera. This is a printed pattern that will be shipped to you. Each pattern is about 40 by 56 stitches, or 2.9 by 4 inches/7.4 by 10 cm on 14 count fabric. To work the whole set you’ll need 20 colors of floss.

These snowflake ornaments from Our Little Handmade Home are each about 2.5 inches/6.4 cm when stitched on 14 count fabric, and they use a single color of floss. They are pretty in red but you could also do white on a blue or black background, or whatever suits your other Christmas tree decorations!

From the description it sounds like this set of vintage style cross stitch characters is presented as one large chart, but the photo from Sampler Antique Stitch shows each of them stitched up as their own little ornament, so it gets included here. You’ll find Santa and snowmen in different poses in this cute collection.