Monday, February 15, 2010

The Women of Firefly - Free Cross Stitch Patterns!

The text that follows these patterns is the same as that on the Men of Firefly post, just in case someone ends up at this post first.

As mentioned above, I recommend using three strands of floss for Inara's hair instead of the usual two. This will make it seem fuller and ensure that fabric doesn't show through gaps in the stitching. I also think it makes a nice contrast to Zoe's hair, which is also black, but should give the impression of being curlier.



To see what the characters look like stitched up you can refer to my Firefly Character Cross Stitch.

A Note on Stitching: I generally stitch the characters on 18 count Aida cloth, and use two strands of floss for each cross stitch. Back stitching is done with just one strand. If you're going to use a larger Aida cloth, such as 14 count, I would recommend using three strands for each cross stitch. Otherwise you may see pretty big gaps between stitches.

I know most experienced cross stitchers will know what types of stitches to make to complete these patterns. If you're new to cross stitch check out this Getting Started With Cross Stitch Tutorial, which includes diagrams.

There are a lot of places where you'll see sections coloured like this, either placed horizontally or vertically. Whenever you see this make a 3/4 stitch in the dominant colour and a 1/4 stitch in the other colour to fill the square. For example, in the sample to the left Square #1 would be filled with a brown 3/4 stitch in the top left quadrant and a yellow 1/4 stitch in the bottom right quadrant. Square #2 would have a 1/4 stitch in brown in the top left quadrant and a 3/4 stitch in yellow in the bottom right quadrant. It may look a little funny at first, but once you've outlined the character in black back stitching these parts will look much smoother.

When the pattern shows two colour numbers separated by a slash, such as 729/727 this means to use one strand of each colour.

A Note on Colours: There are no hard and fast rules about what colours should be used for various characters. What I've done here is listed the colours that I used. These were mostly chosen based on what was already in my stash and what I thought would be suitable. Feel free to make changes. Have a shade of brown, but it isn't the one I used? Use your own judgement. If you think it will be work for someone's hair, pants, etc. save some money and use it rather than tracking down the exact shade I used.

A Note on Patterns: To my knowledge these patterns are correct and the colour shades used have been listed with no typos. Of course, I could be wrong. If you come across any errors or have any questions feel free to post a comment and let me know.

Most of the stitched Firefly creations I've made have writing on them. I won't be posting the alphabets as the ones I've used are copyrighted by other designers. I generally try to say where I got them from in the completed design post, but if you can't find them, there are numerous free alphabets available online and in published cross stitch books.

Enjoy, and don't forget to check out my Men of Firefly cross stitch patterns!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much for sharing these!

Unknown said...

I absolutely love these!!!! Thanks so much.

JigsawJones said...

Can I marry your blog?d

canadianefreeman said...

just wanted to say that your patterns are amazing! thanks for posting the actual patterns, the finished product is beautiful