World Cross Stitch Day: Ms. Pac-Man

Happy World Cross Stitch Day! World Cross Stitch Day was started in 2014 to help create a fun community of cross stitchers all over the world. If you're not familiar with cross stitch, it's a form of counted embroidery. This means the stitcher counts the number of threads to form the pattern. It's often done on fabrics like aida cloth, which has a natural pattern that makes counting and aligning stitches easier than non-weaved fabric. 

I don't cross stitch very often. I know how, but I prefer surface embroidery to cross stitch. A cross stitch (the X stitch) is used in surface embroidery as well, so I do occasionally use the stitch in an embroidery piece. I'm not a huge fan of aida cloth, and was never particularly good at the counting part of cross stitch, so I focused my skill development on surface embroidery instead. My friend Anita is an excellent cross stitcher, and she reminded me about today being World Cross Stitch Day. This piece if for her. 

The pattern is from the book Designer Cross Stitch Projects. This book was gifted to me a few years ago, and it has finally come in handy. The Space Invaders pattern set was the only pattern in the book that would fit in my design space, so I picked Ms. Pac-Man and one of the ghosts, Funky. Funky is from the extended Pac-Man universe, and was the only ghost I had thread to make. It's not the neatest cross stitch ever made, but it's still pretty fun. I considered making it on aida cloth, but decided I didn't want to add more weight to the fabric. This month is full of stuff that add weight to the fabric, so I'm trying to minimize as much as possible. 

While I didn't use easily countable fabric, I still counted the stitches and used a center point for each of the characters. I also outlined the patterns on my fabric, which I wouldn't normally do with a cross stitch design. It helped in this case given the fabric I'm using. 

I like the finished piece. It's not perfect, but it's fun and in the spirit of trying new things. 

Details:
Stitches: cross stitch, back stitch
Thread palette:

• Ms. Pac-Man: DMC 743, 718, 817 (3 strands)
• Ghost: DMC 907, 703 (3 strands)

Pattern: From the book Designer Cross Stitch Projects. I used two similar colors, 743 and 703 because I didn't have the colors in the pattern (theses are one color off from what the book references).