Customize your cross-stitch Friends and family : learn to customize, prepare, stitch, and finish your very own personalized cross-stitch creations

Bean's Stitch People has been creating customized cross-stitched family portraits since 2011, and now they've created simple instructions on how stitchers can create their own. The book begins with basic instructions, including instructions on other stitches, like the running stitch, French knots, and the daisy chain stitch. Then comes the info on customization, including color suggestions for skin and hair, how to create different types of eyes (simple, happy, brows), how to adjust for height and width, and how to create different hair styles. Next come the patterns, deceptively simple portraits that call to mind snapshots: figures posed in various casual settings, from a movie night on the couch to a yoga class and a coffee shop. The charts are color coded, but no colors are given--that's up to the user to decide. The back of the book contains patterns for alphabets and different pets plus blank graph paper. Though perhaps a bit complicated for absolute beginners, creative crafters with even a little bit of cross-stitch experience will enjoy creating these customizable family portraits.

Dabczynski-Bean (Stitch People Weddings), whose company, Stitch People, creates custom cross-stitch family portraits, presents a lighthearted guide on how readers can personalize 12 cross-stitch scenes to represent their own families and friends. The playful designs focus on domestic life, portraying a quartet gathered in front of a couch for a "family night in," a couple with a baby in a nursery, and a duo perched on a stoop. Other scenes show friends enjoying such activities as gathering at a coffee shop, taking a yoga class, and driving down a palm tree--lined road. To customize the scenes, Dabczynski-Bean notes that the cartoonish figures' heights can be adjusted by adding or removing rows from legs, torsos, and arms. She shows how to use different stitching techniques to add eyelashes or a white sparkle in the eyes and includes patterns for various hairstyles, fonts (for writing "we love grandma and grandpa" in the "Grandparent Appreciation" scene), and cats and dogs. Beginners will appreciate Dabczynski-Bean's encouraging tone ("I promise you can do it," she writes) and uncomplicated designs, which use a simple, easy-to-adjust grid system. Readers will adore this. (Nov.)