Free Pattern Friday: Haunted House

Here's a great Halloween free cross stitch pattern for those of you who like a challenge.

This pattern is larger than many of those I've been featuring lately, and it uses both specialty threads from Kreinik and a few specialty techniques like couching.  But the finished project will be perfect if you're looking for something different from the "cutesy" patterns I've been posting lately.

This free cross stitch pattern is available for download in PDF format from the Kreinik website.

Happy stitching!


If you ever come across one of my posts that contains a chart that breaks copyright law, please email me and let me know right away. In picking and posting my free cross stitch pattern posts, I make every effort to ensure the designs I share are legitimately free charts.

Mega Mini Month Madness SAL Progress: Week 2

It's time for Mega Mini Month Madness update #2.  I think I will change my update day from Wednesday to Thursday, since I realized yesterday that Wednesday are my long days... and that usually means I don't have time to blog.

Thanks to conference on Saturday and Sunday last week, I had a pretty productive week of stitching.  In fact, it might be the the most productive week I have all month...

So nothing is "finished" yet, but I did finish all of the stitching on Mill Hill's Hot Stuff for my first mini project of the week:

Then I have made quite a bit of progress on Teton Santa, my largest mini for this challenge:

And I have made a little bit more progress on Be Merry:

Unfortunately I have had to frog quite a bit on this one.  :-/  For some reason, I just can't quite seem to count right.  Hopefully I will have better luck next week.  

So for my goals for the month, they have now been updated to:

1. Finish the beading Tropical Kitty, Provence Rooster, and Hot Stuff
2. Finish stitching Teton Santa and Be Merry (then bead thereafter)
3. Start the last project I 100% must get done before Christmas: Victorian Tree

Until next week!

Be Merry: New Start and Progress Update 10.7.14

Wow, I seem to be posting a lot lately.  Hmmm, don't know if I'll be able to sustain that all throughout this month, or if I'm just lucky on time at the moment.  Also, when you're doing mini projects I find I have to post progress pictures quick, lest they get finished and I have no in-between photos to share.  But in progress pics are cool.  :)

Here's the start of the second-to-last Mill Hill kit I have to get done this year for ornaments for family for Christmas.  I of course have like 13 more kits to do for friends and family period, but I have resigned myself to the fact that if they do not get done this year, that will be okay.

Although this one design is mostly red, for some reason I decided to start with green, so it's not much to look at yet.  Each one of those letters will be checkerboard with beads/not beads, so it's going to be a lot of work on this one I think.

Perhaps a new progress pic for this one to come Thursday in my Mini Mega Month Madness SAL update this week.

Teton Santa: Progress Update 10.6.14

As I mentioned in Saturday's post, I moved back onto Teton Santa for my Sunday conference stitching agenda.  So here's the progress I've made since last time:

Luckily this isn't turning out to be nearly as big as I thought it would be, so I no longer feel a little "iffy" about labeling it a mini for the Mega Mini Month Madness Challenge.  And it's also good that it's working up so fast, although that might change once I'm done with the fairly monochromatic goat and on to the multicolor/multibeaded Santa.  I'll be posting my progress since Sunday later on this week for the challenge.

Hot Stuff: New Start and Progress 10.4.14

So true to my Mega Mini Month Madness Challenge, I dutifully started a new mini project on Wednesday, since it was October 1st.  This one is a kit from Mill Hill called Hot Stuff, and I put down my Quaker project to work on it.

This week is the general conference broadcast for our church, which I love conference weekend because I can usually get a good amount of stitching done while I'm listening to the speakers (I'm not brave enough to stitch in church, but I'll do it when I'm siting at home on my couch).  So although I'd only worked on the piece for about 40 minutes total since Wednesday, I managed to get a good chunk done.  Here's where I'm at after the Saturday morning 2 hour session:

I managed to finish it completely except the beading during the afternoon session, so pictures of that to come later.  Now I'm moving back on to Teton Santa for tomorrow I think, which although it's bigger than this project, I'm still counting as a mini because I will eventually be making it into an ornament.

Free Pattern Friday: Best Witches

Here's to the first Friday of October!  Let's celebrate with another Halloween free cross stitch pattern.

Today's pick comes from the wonderful designer Barbara Ana.  Continuing with the witch theme from last week, this design is called "Best Witches", which is perfert for me, since as an English major, I love puns.  :)  Barbara also has some other super cute Halloween designs available for purchase from your favorite needlework shops, so definitely check those out if you like this design.  One of them, Ice Scream, is currently on my 123stitch wish list.  I so want to get to that someday...

But in the meantime, if you're budget is limited like mine at the moment, you can head over to Cyberstitchers to download this free cross stitch pattern in PDF or two other formats.

Happy stitching!


If you ever come across one of my posts that contains a chart that breaks copyright law, please email me and let me know right away. In picking and posting my free cross stitch pattern posts, I make every effort to ensure the designs I share are legitimately free charts.

Mega Mini Month Madness SAL Progress: Week 1

So lately I find myself splitting my stitching time between actually stitching, looking for new patterns (as if I need more, right?), and reading/joining SALs (that’s Stitch-A-Long for any of you who might be uninitiated :)

Well, I was poking around the other day when looking for new patterns, and I stumbled across a Mega Mini Month Madness SAL hosted by Pull The Other Thread.

Christmas is sneaking up on me fast, and I am going to need to hurry if I’m going to finish my ornament projects for my family by then. So I think this may be a challenge that will be perfect for me. So those are my main goals for this month. I will post my progress (hopefully) at least once a week, in order to fulfil the requirements for the SAL. So my plans for right now are:

1. Finish the beading on the cat and rooster kits I finished stitching in August
2. Finish stitching/beading Teton Santa
3. Start the last three projects I absolutely, 100% must get done before Christmas: Victorian Tree, Hot Stuff, and Be Merry (pictures to come later)

We’ll see how far I get...

If you’d like to join along, the official signups are unfortunately closed, but you can hang out at Pull The Other Thread to check out all the fun and comment with your own progress too.