Cross-stitch

19 Aug 2025

It's threaded pixel art!

Woah Check This Out

I got the bug to pick up cross-stitch after seeing Kory Bing’s cool-ass VHS cross-stitch project. I’ve done a bunch of sprite/pixel work, this is right up my alley. I went out to the local Ben Franklin’s for projects and they had a Super Mario World cross-stitch project that looked simple. I grabbed that and headed home, got halfway through, and the cheap needle it came with broke at the eye. Lol.

After going back to the store and getting a set of tapestry needles, I was able to finish it up and get the finished stitch into the hoop. Here’s that effort!

^{Front of Super Mario World cross-stitch. Click for larger image.}

Hey that turned out pretty nice, how’s the back look?

^{Back of Super Mario World cross-stitch. Click for larger image.}

Eh, uh. That doesn’t look as good. You can see I tried tying off a bunch of threads and making ugly knots. Still, the front looks great!

I need more.

I still had a hankering for more, so back I went and found another project that looked fun and had a functional purpose: a watermelon pin cushion.

^{Watermelon pin cushion cross-stitch packaging, and watermelon pattern with current progress. Click for larger images.}

I’m not too far into it, but it has been teaching me a few things. One thing I learned is that I don’t want to tie knots. Instead, what I’m doing is feeding the end of the thread back through the stitches on the underside. They’ll hold taut onto the tend of the thread, then after I run the needle through 5 or so stitches I exit out and cut the excess. It’s producing some extremely clean stitches on the back! No knots needed. If you want to see what I mean, check out the second image below.

^{Front side of cross-stitch with pattern for reference. Click for larger image.}

^{Back side of cross-stitch. The ends of the threads are terminated through the stitches. Click for larger image.}

You can see I’m doing a lot of work on the fours at the moment! I’m finally starting to get to some areas that aren’t dark green thankfully. It’s gonna be a while before I finish, but that’s fine. It’s a pretty chill, meditative activity while watching something or just wanting to peace out for a bit.

After this, my next goal is going to be locating some aida cloth and planning out my own patterns. If I make some, I’ll be sure to share them!