Happiness Is Cross Stitching

Strawberries in July cross stitch finish.

Hello everyone, I hope you are all well?

I have been doing lots of stitching this week, one of my favourite finishes is this July Calendar Cat pattern featuring Miss Mini Cat harvesting strawberries and making jam.

Below are some photos showing how I completed the finishing.

Stitched on 14 count Aida

DMC stranded cotton threads

Strawberry Mini Cat Cross Stitch pattern

Materials required to complete the project

Card or mount board measuring about 2mm thick

Interfacing for the back of the stitching, can be fusible or not.

Thread for the lacing at the back.

Polyester wadding - optional (1 or 2mm thick)

Strong glue suitable for fabrics (I used a Prit Stick for the first time and it worked really well!) Not acid free though!

This image shows the wadding.

Lay your finished cross stitch face down and iron on the interfacing. Place wadding on top and then the mount board.

Thread your needle with strong thread or use sewing cotton doubled over. Start stitching from the middle and work your way to the edge.

Stitch to the end and fold corners over like this…

Fold over neatly

Make sure the front is aligned perfectly.

Start stitching again from the middle and work towards the opposite edge.

Once the lacing is finished on one side, thread your needle with another long piece and lace the long side from top to bottom as shown below.

Finish off at the corner.

The stitched piece is now ready for mounting on other card that has been covered by fabric.

Cut the fabric about half an inch larger all around to overlap the card, glue into each corner on the back and the sides and adhere to the card.

Measure each card slightly larger than the first piece so that you can stack them like this.

Glue each piece to the last.

You can lay something heavy over the stack and leave to dry. Place a piece of white paper onto the top of the cross stitch to protect the stitching.

I like to stitch the Ric-Rac to the cross stitch edging rather than using glue as it is easier to line it up correctly.

Black cat July calendar cross stitch pattern

July pattern available in my Etsy shop.

Until next time, happy stitching!

Free Be The Sunshine Cross Stitch Pattern and a hoop finish tutorial.

1 comment

Hi everyone, it is currently above 30c in France at the moment, pretty hot so we are indoors with the shutters closed!

In this post I show how to finish a cross stitch into a hoop and give you my latest free cross stitch pattern that is available as a pdf download.

I also show some photos of my latest Autumn designs that I have finished into a hoop and a small pillow.

Free pattern

If the sun is not shining outside (or in your heart at the moment) then here is a free cross stitch pattern for you to stitch. I used DMC thread and backstitched in metallic gold thread.

To download the pattern:

Click on the image of the pattern below and save to your computer or screenshot on ipad. If you would like a pdf copy of the pattern you can contact me in the contact form on my blog, but please leave me your email address in the message or I will not be able to reply.

Your email will only be used to respond to your message.

Stitching update.

I have been stitching quite a lot recently because the weather has been so hot and I had no energy to do anything else. I managed to get some finishing done on some of my projects.

Here is the June Calendar cat finished, a part of the 12 monthly series in my Etsy shop.

Autumn stitching

I finished a couple of Autumn designs, one into a hoop and the other into this small pillow.

Here is the reverse side of the pillow. I attached the Made with Love label using a pretty blanket stitch.

The pattern is available in my Etsy store here

The printable project planner, cards and floss tags are also available with a 20% discount for readers of my blog.

Finishing tips

If you decide to finish your design into a hoop, just iron some interfacing onto the back of your stitched piece, place it into a hoop and gather the fabric around the edge on the reverse side.

Use strong thread to gather around the edge

Then stitch across the hoop pulling but not too tight, finish off into the fabric with a few stitches.

Take the top hoop and draw a line inside the circle onto a piece of felt and then cut out. This will be the perfect size to attach to the back of the hoop using a blanket stitch.