Ga
Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2024
Stamped pater is easy to follow. Thread included
Nerd Mom #11
Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2024
I love cats. I’ve recently discovered that I enjoy cross stitch, and this looked like a nice combination of the two to tackle in my semi-spare time.This claims to be 18inx18in or 45cmx45cm. It is not. What you get is 45cmx44cm of cloth, of which about 15.25” squared or 29cm squared is the cat embroidery itself. This is important for those of us who want to frame it or convert it into a cushion cover. It could still be an approximately 18” cover if the entire border is embroidered as well, but I don’t know that the supplied thread would be sufficient for that after completing the cat. I’m personally leaning towards making it into a cushion cover and will probably downsize it to use a 15” cushion insert with whatever backing I sew on after the embroidery is done.As for the working cloth, it is that stiff fabric with pre-placed holes meant to make embroidery super-easy, which I am thankful for. The colors are mapped onto it, but in ways to make it easy to tell what goes where rather than in their true colors. A key for this mapping is in the empty space to the right of the working space on the same cloth, and there is a matching poster-like printout for reference as well.The kid comes supplied with a finger guard, 3 needles with relatively blunt ends–good for avoiding injuries and plenty sharp for the material, a metal needle threader, and clippers for cutting threads as tools. There is also a very large bundle of the embroidery thread with cardboard labels on them. They appear to match the colors in the canvas in the appropriate quantities, but I won’t know for certain until I finish this project, and that may be months out.The bag it comes shipped in has instructions for cross-stitch on the back, including details on varieties of stitches. Please rest assured that they expect you to do standard x cross-stitch for the entire kit, so don’t panic if you were looking for something simple and see those instructions. They’re not relevant. Based on the cover, I assume they want us to only use 3 strands when embroidering, but as someone still fairly new to embroidery, I would personally have preferred more guidance on how to separate the strands, choose strand lengths, and set-up the needle for embroidery. I’ve watched an embroidery tutorial where they knotted both ends behind the cloth so your working strands were actually double what went through the needle’s, but my intuition keeps wanting to just leave one end knotted behind. Either way, I wish they gave some guidance on that, though it may be very basic, because it definitely changes how much embroidery floss is needed to complete the project.This does look to be a beautiful cross-stitch embroidery project, and I look forward to getting started with it.