By Cross Stitch Library · July 16, 2026
A leaping blue dolphin in clean pixel-art style — a fun, ocean-themed cross-stitch design for beginners and kids alike.
Your pattern is at the end of this page, right after the stitching guide below.
A leaping blue dolphin, blocked out in clean pixel-art style with just two shades of blue doing all the shape work. At 40 x 36 stitches, it’s one of the smaller designs in our pixel-art collection — a solid weekend project rather than a multi-week commitment.
This dolphin captures a mid-leap pose in profile, using flat blocks of color instead of shading gradients — the pixel-art approach that’s having a real moment in cross-stitch right now, since it reads as crisp and graphic rather than painterly. It works well for a kid’s room, a beach house guest bathroom, or anywhere you want a coastal motif that doesn’t lean twee. Pair it with our crab and seahorse patterns if you want a matching ocean-themed trio to frame together.
This is a genuinely good first pattern: every stitch is a full cross stitch (no half stitches or backstitch outlining to learn), and the palette leans heavily on just two colors — DMC 518 (Wedgwood Light) carries 317 of the 642 total stitches, so once you’ve got that one color down, you’ve done half the piece. The remaining 8 colors are mostly small detail accents (DMC 168 and BLANC white each appear only once).
Stitch the body in DMC 518 first — since it’s 317 of the 642 total stitches, getting that block done gives you the dolphin’s full silhouette early and makes the smaller shading colors (939, 519, 823, 775) much easier to place correctly against the completed shape. Save the single-stitch accent colors (168 and BLANC) for last — they’re easy to lose track of if you stitch them early and then second-guess their placement while filling in around them. It pairs well with our seahorse pattern for a matching ocean-themed pair — see our pixel art cross-stitch guide for more on the style, or our ocean and garden animal roundup for more small-scale critter designs.
Choose your paper size and color or black & white, then download the Pixel Dolphin PDF chart and thread list — free, no sign-up.
