MFT & Friends April 2018 - Cross-Stitch Rectangle Die-namics

Hello everyone!  Welcome to another MFT Stamps new feature called MFT & Friends.  This is where the design team and some other crafty friends in the cardmaking community are challenged to take a fresh look at the latest release and come up with some more fun and innovative crafty inspiration.

For my card today, I used the newly released Cross-Stitch Rectangle Die-namics.  Now, I'm going to be honest.  When I first received this die, I didn't really think that I would use it.  Why?  Because I have never done cross-stitching before in my life and I wasn't really sure what to do with it!  However, I wanted to challenge myself to try and learn something new.  I am so glad that I did!  While this card is totally out of my comfort zone, I have to tell you, I highly enjoyed doing it and I definitely plan on doing more cross-stitching on cards in the future.

When my embroidery floss wasn't getting tangled (I'm still getting the hang of it), it was actually quite fun and relaxing!  So, where do you start?  MFT has some beautiful patterns for both the Cross-Stitch Tag and Cross-Stitch Rectangle Die-namics available on their website that you can follow!  You can find them HERE.  Because this was all new to me, I simply picked one of these patterns and followed it.

There are a lot of great videos on YouTube that show you how to cross-stitch.  One of my favorites was this informative video by Jennifer McGuire.  I highly recommend that you check it out!

For my floss, I used the DMC Pearl Cotton Size 5 and a size 20 needle.  I found these at Hobby Lobby but there are many other craft stores that carry these.  Based on a great tip from MFT's Jody Morrow in a recent post, I diecut 4 cross-stitch rectangles, poked the holes out after I stacked them and then glued them together.  This made my cross-stitching base much more sturdy than only using one panel (which I had tried initially) and made it so much easier to work with.  

All in all, I was happy with the result.  I'm looking forward to doing this again and maybe one day, try to make a design from my own pattern.  Fingers crossed!

Don't forget to stop by the MFT Blog to see what amazing designs the rest of the team has created for their fresh look on the latest release!  Hope you all have a wonderful day!

Rachel