Creating Patchwork Cross Stitch from Leftover Embroidery Threads

Look what I finished!!

I started this patchwork cross stitch project way back in 2014, as a way to make use of those scrappy bits of leftover embroidery thread (floss) which aren't quite big enough to be worth keeping and winding back on the bobbin but which still have a few stitches left in them.

I saved up the threads in a compartment in my embroidery thread storage box, then would sit and do a whole batch of stitching in one evening - slowly building up the patchwork design in blocks of colour. It was a super relaxing process!

 

As I wrote when I blogged about this project last year, "I guess I could add a block at a time, each time I have a piece of leftover thread, but I quite like spending a few relaxing hours working on this from time to time. Plus, adding a bunch of colours at once helps me make the randomness of this project more of a controlled randomness - I can spread out the colours more easily, and get a more pleasing mix of tones and shapes than I think I would end up with if I added a block each time I had a scrap of thread to use up.

I like the randomness of this project and how the colour palette (and the speed at which it's growing) is entirely dictated by what other projects I'm working on, and the luck of what size thread scraps I'm left with... but I also want it to be something I love the look of when it's finished!"

To read more about how this piece has developed, click here to read all about how the project has progressed over the years and see lots of in-progress photos.

I'm really pleased with how the finished piece has turned out - someone pointed out that it looks like a tiny quilt, and it totally does! It's about 6 inches (15 cm) square and absolutely jam-packed with colour. Loads of happy hours of stitching have gone into it, but it also represents even more hours of stitching as, of course, these are all just the leftovers from other projects!

And - to think! - all those threads would otherwise have just gone to waste. It's going to be really hard breaking the habit of keeping my scrappy bits of thread now... maybe I'm going to need to start another leftovers-themed project? Hmm...

Want to make your own patchwork design from leftover threads? Simple! Just start keeping your own leftover threads, stitch them in blocks and just keep on going until you've slooooowly filled up a whole square with colour.

A patchwork design like this is also a great way to use up a whole bunch of embroidery threads from your stash, you don't specifically need to be using leftover threads. Just have fun playing around with colour combinations and shapes!

Last year several people asked me for the pattern for this design, which isn't really something I can properly share as I've used to many random colours making this piece. BUT, I have drawn out a chart of how my design ended up, in case you like how the arrangement of blocks look and fancy replicating it. You can use my photos as guide when picking colours and/or use felt tips or coloured pencils to colour in your printed chart to help guide your stitching.

Click here to view the chart in a new window or tab, make sure you're viewing it full size then print.

P.S. For even more scrappy goodness, check out my Patchwork Mini Squares blanket, knitted from yarn left over from many years worth of knitting projects.

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Scrappy Patchwork Cross Stitch: Another Colourful Work-in-Progress.

As well as having an actual patchwork quilt in progress, one of my other UFOs (UnFinished Objects) is a cross stitch homage to patchwork quilts: a colourful patchwork of blocks stitched from Xs of thread instead of fabric.

I started this cross stitch back in 2014, as a way to make use of those scrappy bits of leftover embroidery thread which aren't big enough to be worth keeping but still have a few stitches left in them.
 
By March 2015 I'd stitched 23 little blocks of colour...

... and by June that year it had grown to 40-something blocks and looked like this:

I've been working on this in stops and starts over the years. I save up thread scraps when I have them, then sit down to add a little batch of blocks when I've got a decent amount of thread saved up.

I guess I could add a block at a time, each time I have a piece of leftover thread, but I quite like spending a few relaxing hours working on this from time to time. Plus, adding a bunch of colours at once helps me make the randomness of this project more of a controlled randomness - I can spread out the colours more easily, and get a more pleasing mix of tones and shapes than I think I would end up with if I added a block each time I had a scrap of thread to use up.

I like the randomness of this project and how the colour palette (and the speed at which it's growing) is entirely dictated by what other projects I'm working on, and the luck of what size thread scraps I'm left with... but I also want it to be something I love the look of when it's finished!   

By October 2015 it looked like this...

... and it grew a little in July and August 2016.

I didn't photograph it for a while, just quietly collected leftover threads...

... and added blocks in little batches, until it December last year when it looked like this:

That photo ended up being really popular on Instagram after it got featured by A Beautiful Mess (very exciting!) and quite a few people asked me for the pattern. I don't think this is something I could really do a proper pattern for, though, as I'd have to find matching colours for soooo many random bits of thread.

I am thinking about drawing a chart of the blocks when it's finished (in case anyone wants to copy the exact pattern of shapes I've chosen) but really the best way to replicate this project would be to use your own leftover threads from your stitching projects and make your own unique patchwork piece. I find it a really relaxing project to work on, and it's hugely satisfying creating something so colourful from scraps that would otherwise have just been thrown away.

At the moment it looks like this:

As you can see, I've decided to make this piece a square one instead of filling the whole of the fabric. This is because a) I think it looks great as a square (and it'll look fabulous when its framed) and b) I wanted to reign it in a little so I don't end up cross stitching little coloured blocks forever.

Now there's a limited number of spaces left to fill up, the end is in sight... but who know how long it will take me to actually have the scraps (and the time) to fill them and get this piece finished!

How To: Simple Stripy Scrap Cards

A couple of years ago I'd been thinking about making paper flowers for my sister's wedding. She ended up going in a different direction with her decor, so the crepe paper colour swatch I'd bought went in a drawer and sat there unused... until now!

I have no plans to order more crepe paper any time soon, so when I re-discovered the swatch this week I decided to chop up the samples and use them to make some colourful, stripy cards:

Aren't those colours just gorgeous? Ah, bright colour makes me so happy.

The texture of the crepe paper is also rather wonderful.

Making your own striped cards is a quick and easy crafty project, and a great way to make use of any delicious scraps of colour in your paper stash.

Okay so you probably won't have a crepe paper colour swatch sitting in a drawer, like I did, but if your crafty stash is anything like mine you've probably got lots of colourful paper scraps which you've kept because they're too nice to just throw away.

To make the cards: 

Cut your scraps to an even width (mine are about 5.5 cm across), then cut them into sections of differing heights (I cut mine between 1-3 cm). I used a pencil and a ruler to make sure all my rectangles were straight and neat, drawing the lines on the back of the paper.

Arrange the scraps on white card blanks, with a mix of colours and sizes.

I made some tall stripy cards...

.... a stripy postcard...

... and some mini stripy cards to send with my parcels (using up some scrap bits of white card in the process, hurrah!). Add a hole and a piece of coordinating twine and these would make great gift tags.

Once you're happy with the arrangement of your scraps, stick them in place with double-sided sticky tape or a glue stick. I used tape to stick mine, it's less messy than using glue and I was also worried that pressing the glue stick along the flexible crepe paper would stretch and distort it. Whatever method you chose, line up your rectangles neatly and press them down firmly.

On the mini cards, I cut the cards to be slightly narrower than the paper scraps (5 cm wide) so the paper went up to and over the edges. If you like this look, once you've stuck the paper in place turn the cards over and trim the excess paper with scissors for a lovely neat finish.

So simple, so stripy, so good.

I can't wait to send these little stripy bursts of colour!
 
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A Patchwork Cross Stitch Update + Sewing in Italiano

Remember my patchwork cross stitch project?

I'm using small pieces of embroidery thread left over from other projects to stitch a mini patchwork "quilt" of random, colourful blocks.

 Here's how it looks at the moment:

It's great to be able to use up these scrappy bits of thread instead of just throwing them away, and it's a lot of fun seeing this develop organically as the months go by.

In other news, I got an excellent bit of post yesterday: a copy of the Italian edition of my first book! 

I'd been meaning to get a copy of this (and the German edition of my second book, which I blogged about the other day) for a while now but only just got round to ticking "buy those books!" off my To Do list.

It's really nice having these different editions sitting on on my bookshelf (the part of my bookcase which we jokingly refer to as my "ego shelf" as it contains my press clippings / portfolio folders plus all the books I've contributed to over the years)... but it's even nicer to think of all the happy felt-y things that will be being sewn in Germany & Italy because of them :)

A Scrappy Cross Stitch Project

I've been working on lots of stitch-y projects this month...

... a rose cross stitch pattern, a floral embroidery pattern, and some secret stitching that I can't show you yet.

When you do any kind of sewing project you always end up with lots of scrappy bits of thread left over. Most of the time these are teeny little unusable scraps, but sometimes they're long enough to stitch a few stitches but are still not really worth keeping.

In the spirit of "waste not want not", last year I decided to make use of the second type of scraps - using the left over bits of embroidery thread to cross stitch a kind of mini patchwork quilt.

This is proving to be quite a fun project!

It's like a mini version of my patchwork blanket, where I'm slowly knitting squares from yarn left over from other knitting projects. I choose where to sew each colour of embroidery thread, of course, but the colours I'm using and the size of the shapes I'm cross stitching are totally determined by what scrappy bits of thread happen to be left over from the other projects I've been working on.

I love how the pattern is growing slowly, randomly and organically as I do more embroidery and gradually collect more scraps of thread to add to it. It's also great to be making something with these small pieces of embroidery thread that would otherwise have been thrown away.

Do you do anything with your scrap threads? 

Christmas Scraps

Remember that lovely Christmas fabric I blogged about earlier this month?

Well, I've made a start on my project! Yay! I can't blog about it yet as it's going to be a gift (shhhh...), so here are some pics of the scraps I had left over after cutting out all the pieces.

I'd been planning on breaking out my much-neglected sewing machine for this project as it's going to involve lots of stitching, but I've changed my mind and decided to hand stitch it instead - partly because I'm not super confident with a machine as I'm so out of practice. (Note to self: practise using your sewing machine in 2015!)

I find working on a new, fun project can be a bit addictive - all I want to do is work on it, and I end up staying up waaaay past my bedtime because I think "I'll just get this bit finished..." and then look up and realise it's 1am. Oops.

But apart from some bad "it is definitely a good idea for me to stay up sewing this instead of going to bed, who needs sleep??" decision making, things are going well! It is an absolute pleasure to be working on a relaxing personal project after weeks of focusing on work deadlines.

Plus, I'm loving being able to sit and sew with festive fabric while binge-watching made-for-TV Christmas movies, which I adore and cannot get enough of at this time of year :)

P.S. Happy Thanksgiving! xxx

Scraps, Colour Samples and a Crafty Cake

This week has been very hectic as I've been juggling a bunch of different projects - brainstorming ideas and pitching designs for a couple of deadlines, stitching and photographing things for another, plus doing all the usual crafty, bloggy, emaily stuff that goes on in my working week.

One of the projects I'm working on involves pretty Liberty fabric. The scraps are so pretty I can't bear to throw even the teeniest of them away! I must think up a way to use them for something crafty... hmm...

The dark weather this time of year makes photo-taking a challenge. There's just so few hours of usable daylight and sometimes it's so gloomy that "light" seems like too strong a word to use! I am currently dividing my schedule into "daylight" and "non daylight" tasks, so I can make the most of the light that is available before it fades.

A particularly tricky thing to photograph even in good light = neon colours, which I was working with this week. I did lots of experimenting with different backgrounds to get the neon shades to look right.

 

 

One of my "non daylight" tasks was to sort through some old sketches and project proposals, adding unused ideas to my box of "project idea" index cards. One set of sketches has some colour samples attached, which I thought were much too pretty not to photograph before I threw them away:

It has mostly been work work work work work here this week, but there has been time for cake (check out those button-shaped berries and "knitted" leaves!)...

... and for a flick through some copies of the wonderful UPPERCASE magazine.

I've been meaning to buy some copies of UPPERCASE for simply ages but after listening to this interview with the editor I could resist no longer and treated myself to some back issues plus the lovely Work/Life illustration directories.

They are going to be perfect reading material for evenings when I want to relax and soak up some inspiration away from the internet (I love you, internet, but too much of you is a bad thing!) and for when our yowly cat decides it is time for me to STOP WORKING AND GIVE HER CUDDLES THIS INSTANT :)

Bits & Pieces This Week

This week I worked on a couple of projects that left these pretty felt & fabric scraps...

I spotted my second book for sale over at The Book People at a seriously bargainous price (wowzers!) ...

I was majorly tempted by the clearance sale section at New House Textiles - especially these fab designs by Charlotte Farmer. I have resisted so far but aargh, those corgis are just so great...

And I was delighted to see this blog post by Aimee Ray about her new book, Doodle Stitching: The Holiday Motif collection which a) looks lovely and b) includes a couple of projects stitched by me! :)

I can't wait to get hold of my contributor copy! Doodle Stitching: The Holiday Motif Collection is out now and available from Amazon UK, Amazon USA and many other bookshops.

Please note: the Amazon links in this post are affiliate links.

Crafty Bits & Bobs from a Busy Day

Yesterday was one of those days that was over in a flash. I had a big To Do list and a full inbox and after tick tick ticking lots of things off the list and sending lots of emails all of a sudden I looked up and it was 7pm! Definitely time to stop work, turn off my laptop and go and have some dinner!

Here's some snaps from my day:

Lovely new pens (the metallic markers are especially fab!), used for sketching a design proposal.

 

Scraps of an old pillowcase, left over from making a prototype for something new (challenging but also exciting!)

 

Bright pink & yellow supplies - I love these two colours together! Super cheerful.

 

Dried lavender, for stuffing some lavender sachets I'm working on for a blog tutorial (coming as soon as I've had a chance to photograph them and get the instructions typed up).

And finally (just before I switched the laptop off for the night) a colourful yarn shade card to help me order just the right colours of yarn (from Country Crafts) for a new project. I actually already knew which colours I needed to order but I couldn't resist getting the shade card out and picking some extra shades in pretty colours! The more yarn the better, right??