Tabby Cat with a Ball of Yarn Cross Stitch Pattern

About this tabby cat cross stitch pattern

A ginger tabby lies curled in a circle with its eyes closed and a contented smile, front paws wrapped around a blue ball of yarn as if it caught it and then fell asleep. Its back is striped with darker orange, its ears are pink inside, and its tail wraps around the outside of the curl.

It’s a gift with two audiences: cat owners and anyone who knits or crochets. It’s small enough for a sewing room wall or the lid of a project box. If you’d like another ginger cat, the Ginger Cat with a Cocktail is a larger, funnier one; our cat round-up has every cat pattern side by side.

What you need

• Fabric: 14-count Aida in white, cut to at least 12“ 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 3854 Autumn Gold – Medium (1,570 stitches), 310 Black (822) and 434 Brown – Light (722).
• Needle: a size 24 tapestry needle.
• Stitches: full cross stitches only, with no backstitch.

Difficulty and stitching time

It’s rated Intermediate mainly for the yarn ball, where three blues wind around each other in thin lines. The cat itself is mostly one orange with brown stripes. At 4,217 stitches it takes roughly 42 to 70 hours at a steady 60 to 100 stitches an hour; about 28% of the fabric stays bare.

Tips for stitching this pattern

• Fill the cat’s orange in one go. 3854 Autumn Gold – Medium covers 1,570 stitches, more than a third of the design. Stitching it before the 434 Brown – Light stripes (722 stitches) shows you the curl of the body early.
• Follow the yarn strands one color at a time. 3765 Peacock Blue – Very Dark (154 stitches), 597 Turquoise (102) and 807 Peacock Blue (84) make the wound strands. Work each blue along its curve before starting the next, so the strands read as continuous lines.
• Leave the pink for last. The inner ears, nose and paw pads use 3858 Rosewood – Medium (149 stitches) and 3857 Rosewood – Dark (48). Placing them after the outline and the orange fill makes them easy to count.

Size, fabric and framing

On 14-count Aida the finished design measures 6.0“ x 5.0“ (15.2 x 12.7 cm). On 16-count it comes out at 5.2“ x 4.4“, and on 18-count at 4.7“ x 3.9“. An 8“ x 10“ frame leaves room for a mat.

In a 7“ hoop it makes a nice sign for a craft room door.

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