This design is inspired by About.com Guide to Rubber Stamping Kate Pullen's free Valentine's Day digital stamps. A delightfully delicious cupcake with towering tiers of frosting is combined with a saying for a Cupcake Valentine that is sweet, but still calorie free. This treat will be a luscious gift for someone special and is suitable for display year-round.

Alter the colors to create the cupcake flavor of your choice - Chocolate anyone?

As always, if you use one of the free patterns from About.com Cross Stitch, please share a photo with us.

Stitch the free sports motifs to create special bookmarks or banners for you favorite sports fans. You might even decide to stitch up the football during a certain game that is coming up in a few weeks.

Or, join us in the Super Star Challenge and stitch one of the free charts from the Back Stitch Stars Pattern Collection using the fabric, floss, stitches, and embellishments of your choice. When you are done, share a photo of your project so we can all ohh and ahh over what you have done.

More Free Easy Patterns:

• Easy Baby-Themed Cross Stitch Patterns
• Animal Mini Motifs
• Various Holiday Motifs

Mardi Gras will be here very soon and even if you don't live in New Orleans or another city that celebrates in a big way, you can still decorate and have a party, right? So get started on the free Jeweled Crown pattern and some of the other charts listed below.

The design is presented in two formats - the first is a silhouette and the second, a colorful version. You may stitch the silhouette in the color of your choice. Purple might be good - it is another symbol of royalty after all. The colorful version will sparkle if you add some metallic floss or blending filament in addition to the suggested floss colors.

Whether you stitch it for a Mardi Gras decoration or make an ornament, this chart is comprised of whole cross stitch only, so it is simple enough for beginners. Adding special fibers and flosses will provide a challenge to experienced stitchers. You may also want to fill in some parts of the design with a cross stitch variation to give a different appearance to the design.

More Free Charts suitable for Mardi Gras:

• Mardi Gras Motifs
• Simple Back Stitch Crown
• King's Crown

One of the more complicated free pattern sets available from About.com Cross Stitch is the Vintage Seamstress Valentine Collection. If you are looking for an advanced Valentine-themed project, check these out.

Barbara Crews, About.com Guide to Collectibles, has a number of Vintage Valentine Postcards in her collection. I thought the Vintage Seamstress Valentine would appeal to stitchers, so I asked (and received) permission to adapt it as a Cross Stitch chart.

There are three patterns in the Vintage Seamstress Valentine Collection. The first is a detail from the card of the young seamstress alone (shown here). The other patterns reproduce the entire card, one with the saying, and one blank so that you can stitch it with your own saying or just as a plain heart. While the designs are based on a Valentine, they are so charming you will want to display them year-round.

More Free Valentine-Themed Charts:

• Love and The Maiden - PinoyStitch Pattern
• Love is Patient Sampler
• Languages of Love Pattern

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