This week’s stitchqueries is a little bit different. This is a plea for help in finding a pattern …. Janet emailed me a few weeks ago looking for a pattern of a bear with his arms up where you stitch his face sweater and toes then cut out the bear sew him together and stuff him.

I had never seen a pattern like this before, and I was coming up empty on searches. I’m usually pretty keen at hunting things down online, so I asked if she had any other information on the pattern. While we don’t have the designer or pattern name, she came back with this photo to help in the hunt…

If you recognize this cute little guy please let us know! Janet is seeking him and wants to stitch one up.

Thank you for your help and happy stitching!

This week’s question is in regard to purchasing large photo conversion charts from eBay.

I saw a pattern from ebay- rainbow sunset cross stitch (452) and I found it too good to be true. I think it’s a chart generated from a photograph. Can we really crosstitch the pattern to look like the picture that we see? I hope you can help me. Thanks in advance.

I’m always weary of buying charts like this from eBay unless it’s from a cross stitch designer or company I recognize, because you can never be sure if the image to cross stitch conversion was done correctly. While it can be done with excellent results (for example, Heaven and Earth Designs and Mystic Stitch pattern products) it can also be done very poorly and often the results you receive from eBay are of the poorer quality. That’s not saying this isn’t a good pattern… it might be, but it’s a toss up 50/50 chance of what kind of chart you’re really going to get.

Why do I say this? Being familiar with converting image files to charts using software I know that it can be a painstaking process of going through each line stitch by stitch to make sure the floss color is of equal match up to the picture you’re trying to recreate. In a lot of cases the sellers on eBay are just hitting the “convert” button and not making the necessary adjustments to the pattern, therefore you’ll frequently find green where there should be beige, orange where there should be purple, and so on and so forth.

I hopped over to eBay to check this particular pattern out….

….and I do see that the seller has a large number of good feedback and 98% good feedback overall, so it might be worth the gamble if it’s something you really want to stitch. Good results are possible, but so are bad ones.

I wish there was more advice to offer here. If you do purchase the pattern and stitch it I look forward to seeing the finished work! (fingers crossed for good results!)

Happy Stitching!

I’m really enjoying receiving your cross stitch questions and answering them each week, so please do keep asking. No question is too big or too small, I love them all (and hey, I even rhymed!) This week’s question is a fun sort of question….

I noticed you use evenweaves and linens more than aida, but what is your favorite fabric to cross stitch on?

Ah, the joy of choosing a fabric for your next project! I love it <3

I do prefer evenweave fabrics and if you’d look in my stash cabinet you would see that 99% of my currently owned pieces are hand-dyed from Silkweaver Fabrics, which was recently purchased out by Zweigart Fabrics. So, the short easy answer is my favorite fabric comes from Zweigart Fabrics!

To be specific, from Zweigart I really like their Jubilee evenweave fabric and their Belfast Linen fabric. I have quite a few of both of those in my stash cabinet and I enjoy stitching on them both.

If you’re making the switch from aida to evenweaves, Jubilee is a nice smooth evenweave that is easy to make the transition on and I highly recommend it as a “newbie” evenweave.

==> Click here for my guide to getting started stitching on evenweaves!

Happy Stitching!
Kind Regards,