Customize Your Cross-Stitch: Friends and Family: Learn to customize, prepare, stitch, and finish your very own personalized cross-stitch creations

by Lizzy Dabczynski-Bean, The Team at Stitch People

Overview

Make your very own personalized cross-stitch pieces by combining these “ready-to-go” patterns with the included tips and tricks for customization.

Customize Your Cross-Stitch: Friends and Family by Lizzy Dabczynski-Bean and the team at Stitch People is the perfect how-to guide, whether you are an experienced cross-stitcher who wants to create personalized pieces or a beginner who has never before held a needle and thread.

This helpful guide introduces you to the basics of the craft with easy-to-follow written directions and photographic instructions. You can learn everything from using the tools of the trade to reading a pattern, creating basic stitches, and tweaking an already-existing design. The beautiful, modern designs in this book are accompanied by simple instructions appropriate for all skill levels.

The easy-to-follow lessons—complete with patterns, detailed instructions, and photographs—ensure success in customizing patterns to create your very own unique pieces. Discover how to swap out colors, alter hairstyles, change clothing, and much more, to make your scene depict you and your own friends and family!

Learn to stitch and customize patterns of these adorable scenes:
 

• A couple sitting on a porch
• A family portrait with a pet
• Friends on a road trip
• A meeting for coffee at the cafe
• A baby birth announcement
• A family sledding scene
• A family in the garden
• A pool party
• A family picnic at the park

An inspiration gallery at the end includes full-color images of additional finished pieces to inspire you to continue your learning with even more patterns from Stitch People, which has offered patterns and instruction for do-it-yourself cross-stitched family portraits since 2014.

Create custom cross-stitch art that will be treasured for generations with this easy-to-follow guide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780760385357
Publisher:	Walter Foster Publishing
Publication date:	12/05/2023
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 10.90(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Lizzy Dabczynski-Bean (Dabczynski pronounced dab-chin-ski) started her service business Stitch People in 2013. The first Stitch People portraits were Christmas gifts for her family in 2011; now countless customized portraits have been stitched for families all over the world based off of her designs. Stitch People is now a wife-and-husband team headed by Lizzy and has expanded its pattern collections with digital patterns available for purchase and download online at StitchPeople.com.

Julian Odessa is the design lead and resident Australian at Stitch People. His tale is a common one: boy starts out as a musician, becomes a cancer researcher, and then returns to the arts to work from home in his comfy pants, helping people reconnect with their creativity while keeping the coffee bean supply chain well-funded. Find Julian's article segment for CrossStitcher Magazine UK, where he looks at the relationship between art and mindfulness. Follow Julian on Instagram @jojodessa

Table of Contents

Welcome!
About the Book
Tools & Materials
Preparing to Stitch
How to Cross-Stitch
Other Stitching Techniques
Customize Your Cross-Stitch
Patterns
Family Night In, Baby Announcement, A Happy Home, Yoga Class, Road Trip
Grandparent Appreciation Scenes, Grandparent Appreciation Individuals
Coffee Break, Wintertime Fun, Springtime Fun, Summertime Fun, Autumn Fun
Finishing a Portrait in a Hoop
Resources
About Stitch People & the Author
Stitchers
 

Editorial Reviews

09/18/2023

Dabczynski-Bean (Stitch People Weddings), whose company, Stitch People, creates custom cross-stitch family portraits, presents a lighthearted guide on how readers can personalize 12 cross-stitch scenes to represent their own families and friends. The playful designs focus on domestic life, portraying a quartet gathered in front of a couch for a “family night in,” a couple with a baby in a nursery, and a duo perched on a stoop. Other scenes show friends enjoying such activities as gathering at a coffee shop, taking a yoga class, and driving down a palm tree–lined road. To customize the scenes, Dabczynski-Bean notes that the cartoonish figures’ heights can be adjusted by adding or removing rows from legs, torsos, and arms. She shows how to use different stitching techniques to add eyelashes or a white sparkle in the eyes and includes patterns for various hairstyles, fonts (for writing “we love grandma and grandpa” in the “Grandparent Appreciation” scene), and cats and dogs. Beginners will appreciate Dabczynski-Bean’s encouraging tone (“I promise you can do it,” she writes) and uncomplicated designs, which use a simple, easy-to-adjust grid system. Readers will adore this. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Readers will adore this.”

—Publishers Weekly

"Simply stated, Customize Your Cross-Stitch: Friends Family by needlecraft expert Lizzy Dabczynski-Bean is fun, informatively instructive, and a highly prized pick."—Midwest Book Review

From the Publisher