Cross stitch baby Onesies

A few weeks ago I tried something I hadn’t yet attempted: I cross stitched some clothing. I had to do a bit of research on the topic. There’s considerably more chatter online about traditional embroidery stitches — Sublime Stitching for example — than cross stitching. Advice I found regarding free form embroidery proved unhelpful in cross stitch. I did not have any luck whatsoever with fabric stabilizers.

The first attempt a total washout, I returned to the the interwebs and found a product called waste canvas. This proved to be the key to the entire endeavor. Waste canvas is a bit like cross-stitch fabric with the barest of fabric. It provides a guide for your stitching and once completed can be removed fairly easily, particularly if your design is fairly small as these are.

As you can see, I did manage to complete several items. For my first non-Aida fabric cross stitch I elected to embroider baby Onesies™ — I am surprised to find that Onesie is actually ™ by the Gerber company. Some friends of mine recently had a baby, so I sent a couple to them. That’s their baby in the bottom shot.

I chose to stitch the Metool from Mega Man 2, the blue motorcycle from Excitebike, the zombie from Castlevania, and of course the Slime from Dragon Quest.

11/03/08 Added a short paragraph about waste canvas as per suggestion of comments below.

Colors used (DMC)

• Metool (Mega Man 2)
  • 310 – Black
  • 977 – Light Golden Brown
  • B5200 – Bright White
• Excitebike
  • 310 – Black
  • 943 – Very Dark Turquoise
  • 964 – Very Light Turquoise
• zombie (Castlevania)
  • 211 – Light Lavender
  • 310 – Black
  • 996 – Medium Electric Blue
• Slime (Dragon Quest)
  • 310 – Black
  • 891 – Dark Pink
  • 995 – Dark Electric Blue
  • B5200 – Bright White