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Realism = No symmetrical flowers!

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annieAs I browsed through Annies Crazy World just now, I had one of those lightbulb moments.

Her latest work includes a band of gorgeous silk-ribbon flowers. They’re truly lovely and the ideal touch for this piece — an embellishment I’d like to emulate. But my vicious internal critic said, “Don’t bother. You can’t make those flowers correctly. You’ve tried a hundred times and they always look stupid and false.” Then I saw this close-up shot of the flower band, and it finally hit me: Annie Whitsed’s posies are not symmetrical! They’re tipped and tilted and gently ruffled. The composition is balanced, but the flowers are as varied as they would be in a live garden. By avoiding perfect repetition, Annie has achieved……perfection!

How in the world did it take me so long to figure this out? Many, many thanks to Annie for providing a model that I — and perhaps a few other stitchers — can connect with. Guess what I’ll be practice-stitching tonight.

Go to Annie’s blog to see beautiful photos of this and many other charming projects.

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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.