| Size | 35 × 35 stitches |
|---|---|
| Colours | 3 · DMC |
| Total stitches | 197 |
| Difficulty | Easy (2/5) |
| Finished on 14-count | 2.5 × 2.5 in (6.4 × 6.4 cm) |
| Finished on 16-count | 2.2 × 2.2 in (5.6 × 5.6 cm) |
| Finished on 18-count | 1.9 × 1.9 in (4.9 × 4.9 cm) |
| Licence | CC BY-NC 4.0 — free for personal use with credit |
Materials
About this design
This is the snowflake we would stitch for a first winter card: clear, balanced and quick. Every arm is a single stitch wide, worked in DMC 798 Delft Blue Dark, with branches that fan out along the way and tips of 3755 Baby Blue that make the arms look as if they are fading into frost. At the centre sits a small diamond of 3865 Winter White. The flake has eight arms rather than the six of a real ice crystal, which suits the square grid of Aida and keeps it perfectly symmetrical in both directions.
How to stitch it
Start at the centre diamond and stitch outwards along each arm in turn. Because the arms are one stitch wide and many of the stitches meet only at their corners, plan your thread path along each arm and back rather than jumping between arms; a jump of more than a few holes behind open fabric will show as a shadow. The light-blue tips are separate short runs, so stitch all of them in one go at the end with a fresh thread. Keep your crosses all lying in the same direction, as single-width lines make any stray top stitch easy to see.
Finishing ideas
At 35 × 35 stitches the snowflake is about 2.5 inches across on 14-count Aida and about 1.9 inches on 18-count. Fabric choice changes the look: on bright white the winter-white centre almost disappears and the flake seems to have an open heart, while on cream, pale grey or ice-blue fabric it shows as a soft glow. It fits a 3-inch hoop ornament or a 4 × 6 inch card with an aperture.
Colour plan
DMC 798 Delft Blue Dark does the most work, 73% of the 197 stitches, followed by DMC 3755 Baby Blue at 20%. Every colour is used at least 13 times, so there are no tiny one-off details to hunt for. 84% of the grid is left empty.
Working notes
76 squares stand alone in their colour, with no same-coloured neighbour along a side; stitch those as you pass rather than starting a new thread for each. The busiest row changes colour 14 times.
Anchor equivalents
The nearest Anchor colour for each DMC colour in this pattern, measured as ΔE 2000: up to 3 is very close, up to 6 close, up to 10 approximate.
This is an original CraftPatterns design, licensed CC BY-NC 4.0: stitch it, share it and gift what you make — please credit craftpatterns.app and don't sell the pattern itself. Want to change it? Open it in the cross stitch editor.
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