Zelda Cross-stitch

I found a cross-stitch pattern of Link giving a heart to Zelda and knew it was destined to be in my friends' house. I actually JUST started working on it as a surprise when I received an invite in the mail to their engagement party. FATE, I TELL YOU.

Original pattern: http://thecraftyredhead.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/current-project-mario-through-the-years/

This is the second time I've cross stitched. What I learned this go around: you can eyeball the colors, and it's fine. The first project I made was a legit pattern with all colors in DMC and labelled appropriately. This project was a googled image with anchor colors that didn't match the threads I had. So eyeball.

Used Photoshop to overlay text and approximate the pattern

It's also not all that difficult to turn something into a cross-stitch pattern. I googled letters for their names and didn't find one I liked, so I just overlaid text on a grid and painted in the squares in Photoshop.

It is small, so it didn't take long to make.

The hardest part was finding the frame for it, ha. Shadow boxes for a 5"x7" pattern are super deep. It looked weird. I found this matted frame at Hobby Lobby during a 50% off sale. I ended up hot gluing white fabric to the cardboard backing and pinning the stitch to that.

Next? I think doing the world map from A Link to the Past would be epic. It would also take a year. No idea where it would go in my house.

Source: http://www.aimlessdirection.com/2009/cross-stitched-zelda-map/

Source: http://baardei.nl/2011/07/20/zelda-maps-cross-stich/