Lots of Santas!

Here's one of my all-time favorite Christmas pieces: Santas Around the World.
It was shown as a cross-stitch pattern in a cross-stitch magazine many years ago...I don't recall which magazine it was. I guess you could also consider it a Santa Sampler...

But in any event, I fell in love with the image of all those different santas in a row, with the rest of those lovely wintery motifs of trees, stars, hearts and snowflakes.

Again, I stitched this on the brown 18 ct mono canvas, using 3-4 ply of DMC floss (and some sparkly thread for the snow and snowflakes). The orginal pattern probably had a lot of backstitching around all the santas, but I only backstitched where it was absolutely necessary, and let the thread colors define the santas. The dark brown background is left unstitched, because I like the vintage, rustic look...and I feel it lets the thread colors POP without creating any background distractions. (Of course, when you stitch this way and leave the background unstitched, you need to be careful not to lay threads across the back - or they will show through to the front.)

And here's another cross-stitch santa that I stitched as a needlepoint santa, and then hung to make a small Christmas banner:



These are just a few of the ways you can have fun with all those lovely cross-stitch Christmas designs by adapting them to needlepoint!