Family Time-Line in Cross Stitch

Hi! I’m Nancy and I blog over at www.dosmallthingswithlove.com. I am thrilled to be stopping by here to share my Family Time-Line in Cross Stitch project with all of you while Jenna is out snuggling her new little baby.

Like Jenna, I’m a stitcher and I share all of my projects on my blog. See that header? That’s me, stitching. I actually have 3 kids now, I need a new header, but I’m still stitching. In fact, I would say that stitching is a life-style for me. It’s how I relax. It’s how I express things. Sometimes it’s even how I teach my kids to pray the rosary. Seriously I stitch all of the time and I love it. The project I’m sharing here today is one of my absolute all-time favorites because it showcases my little family and how it has grown and changed in just a few short years.

But first, a few words about cross stitch. Cross stitch was the first type of embroidery I every tried–and it is the simplest. It’s basically pixel art! There are tons of cross stitch patterns out there, and it is easy to make your own patterns–which is what you do for this project. If you are new to cross stitch, head HERE for all the details.

All of the family portraits included in my family timeline I planned out on this BLANK CROSS STITCH GRID.

Onto the timeline! I got married back in 2010, so the first piece of my timeline is a cross stitch portrait of me and my husband on our wedding day. Aren’t we cute in cross stitch?

If you’d like to stitch up a portrait of you and your hubby from your wedding day (and why shouldn’t you?) head HERE for a free pattern, and lots of other ideas of for different styles of dresses, bouquets and veils.

After that it was full speed ahead for our little family. We added a baby in 2011, 2012 and another just this last June. It was a lot of fun to work up a pattern for each of these years and play around with my hairdos and outfits.

Here’s us in 2013 when my daughter was just 1 and my son was 2 and a half (I know you love my shoes).

Speaking of kids, figuring out how tall to make them can be the trickiest part of planning out a family cross stitch portrait. I’ve played around with this a lot. HERE I graphed out and shared the pattern I used for my daughter in the 2013 portrait–a sort of pre-walker aged kid.

And here is the final (for now) family portrait in the timeline: 2014. Like I said, I had a baby this summer, our little Dominic, so I had to include him. It took a lot of trial and error, but I FINALLY figured out how to stitch up a little baby held in a momma’s arms. The eyes aren’t great (hey, this is cross stitch after all), but I think he turned out pretty good. Head HERE for the pattern for a baby bundle.

And there you have it. Who knew cross stitch could be so cute? And really, this is totally a doable project for ANYONE, even a person that has never cross stitched before. In fact, I recently got my 6-year-old niece into cross stitch, and she is working on a few family portraits right now.

Give it a try, and if you have any questions I would totally love to help. Just stop by the blog and drop me a line!

If you could stitch up any person in the whole world, living or dead, who would it be? Let us know!

All the best–and thanks for having me, Jenna!