Lumpus Loves You

One of my most awesome intarwebs friends is Carrie Anne of the Little Big Blog and the Little Big Vintage Shop. She is a kickass thrifter, mom, cook, crafter, and wrangler of cats. One of her cats is known lovingly by the nickname of Lumpus (he’s kind of a big guy) and one day we were chatting on twitter and she reminded me that, if nothing else, one should always remember that Lumpus loves you. This inspired me to make a cross stitch that she could hang on the wall.

I used a free online service to translate the photo to a cross stitch pattern, and though it came out with slightly darker colors than I probably would’ve chosen otherwise, I think it turned out pretty well.

When I was finished stitching, I trimmed the fabric to just a bit larger than the hoop:

Then I cut a circle of cardboard that would fit almost snugly inside the hoop and covered it with a layer of fleece and a layer of cute kitty fabric I happened to have on hand. I sewed this together to draw it tight around the cardboard:

Here you can see the fleece under the fabric:

Here it is all stitched up and ready to use:

At this point I realized that if I left the flap of cross stitch fabric overlapping underneath, it would show through, so I trimmed it very carefully and glued it to the hoop:

I cut another circle of white fleece to go inside so that it would help the design stand out well:

And then popped the fabric-covered circle into the back of the hoop:

And voila! A finished product:

Carrie Anne was pleased with it, and so am I. I haven’t done much cross stitch in years (decades!) and it has been fun to get back into it a little.