Swaddled Baby Duckling Cross Stitch Pattern

About this baby duckling cross stitch pattern

Only the duckling’s head shows: a round yellow face with closed, sleepy eyes, pink cheeks and an orange bill, poking out of a blanket wrapped around it like a cocoon. The blanket is drawn in wide diagonal stripes of teal, cream and peach, with a few small orange stars on the lower edge, and a dark brown outline runs around the whole bundle.

It is small enough to finish before a baby shower and simple enough for a first project, and it works framed in a nursery or set into a hoop as a keepsake with the baby’s name added underneath. If you want a second duck for the same room, the Duckling in a Ghost Costume is a bigger, autumn version; our nursery round-up has more designs for a baby’s room.

What you need

• Fabric: 14-count Aida in white, cut to at least 11“ x 11“ (3“ around the design for hooping and framing).
• Thread: 19 DMC colors, about 19 skeins in total, stitched with two strands. The main colors are 725 Topaz – Medium Light (739 stitches), 959 Seagreen – Medium (715) and 3770 Tawny – Very Light (584).
• Needle: a size 24 tapestry needle.
• Stitches: full cross stitches only, with no backstitch.

Difficulty and stitching time

It’s rated Beginner because most of it is big, flat blocks of color: the yellow head and the four blanket stripes make up most of the design, and they are filled in long straight runs. At 3,026 stitches it takes roughly 30 to 50 hours at a steady 60 to 100 stitches an hour. The 19 colors look like a lot for a small piece, but many of them are only a few stitches of shading on the bill and the cheeks.

Tips for stitching this pattern

• Outline the bundle in 898 first. The 326 stitches of 898 Coffee Brown – Very Dark mark the edge of the head and every fold of the blanket, so each stripe then has a clear border to fill up to.
• Stitch one stripe color at a time. 959 Seagreen – Medium (715 stitches), 3770 Tawny – Very Light (584) and 754 Peach – Light (441) run diagonally across the blanket. Finishing all the teal before you start the cream keeps you from counting the same diagonal three times.
• Leave the face details for last. The bill, the closed eyes and the cheeks use 3854 Autumn Gold – Medium (25 stitches), 224 Shell Pink – Very Light (21) and a few other small colors. Placing them on top of the finished 725 yellow makes it easy to see where each one sits.

Size, fabric and framing

On 14-count Aida the finished design measures 4.3“ x 5.0“ (10.9 x 12.7 cm). On 16-count it comes out at 3.8“ x 4.4“, and on 18-count at 3.3“ x 3.9“. An 8“ x 10“ frame leaves room for a mat.

For a birth announcement, stitch the baby’s name and date underneath in 898 and frame the two together.

What’s in the free PDF

• A cover page and a one-page overview with a preview of the design
• The chart, split across as many printable pages as you choose, in color or black and white, with a symbol for every DMC color, center lines, a mini-map showing which part of the design each page covers and a color key on every page
• The thread list: DMC number, color name, number of stitches and skeins to buy for each color
• The finished size on 11-, 14-, 16-, 18- and 28-count Aida