review // sketch it! stitch it! books

Most of the time you'll see me working on embroidery patterns and projects. Then, nearly three years ago, I was asked to design some cross-stitch patterns. It sounded like a fun challenge, so I said yes. The process of drawing embroidery patterns and cross-stitch charts is quite different, but I've continued to grow in my pattern-making confidence.

The biggest difference in making patterns for these two processes, of course, is that instead of an outlined drawing, you need to work on a grid. That's where these adorable sketch books come in handy! Betty from Make it Betty makes these soft-cover sketch books filled with grid paper that is already sub-divided into 10x10 blocks.



Betty sent me a set of Sketch It! Stitch It! books to try out, and I used them for a recent set of designs that were a hybrid between embroidery and cross-stitch. To design my patterns, I started out like to do with any of my cross-stitch designs: with a sketch.

It's easy to think that you need to begin with a drawing that looks a lot like the end will...something like pixel art. But actually, I just rough sketch in my normal style over the grid, trying not to think too much about details at this point.

By the way, those purple boxes are my own addition to mark out the space I wanted to work within.



Then I start filling in or outlining based on the grid. Usually colored pencils are my go-to. In this case, I was following the grid with longer lines of back stitch, rather than filling the squares to represent cross stitches.



The result of my chart was this stitched bracelet! You can find this and the rest of the charts I worked on in my Sketch It! Stitch It! book over at The Spruce.



These lines of varying lengths became the last chart in the set I shared. It's inspired by the knotted friendship bracelets we made as kids!

For the past few years, as I've created cross-stitch charts for Cross Stitch Crazy magazine (including a set of party designs that you can now find in my shop), I print out graph paper to work on. When I finish, the sketches often get misplaced. What's handy about these sketch books is that my hand-drawn charts are all in one place and I don't have to hunt for them!

When I go to make the final charts, I use an iPad app called StitchSketch (no connection to these books!). But if you're just stitching for yourself, rather than selling charts to others, the Sketch It! Stitch It! books will become your own pattern spot!

Thanks, Make it Betty, for giving me the opportunity to work with your delightful sketch books!