By Cross Stitch Library · October 10, 2026
A smug ginger tabby leans on a wooden bar holding a citrus cocktail with fresh mint — a funny cross-stitch for a home bar, kitchen or cat-loving friend.
Your pattern is at the end of this page, right after the stitching guide below.
Elbow on the bar, cocktail glass held up like a toast, a ginger tabby gives the viewer the satisfied half-smile of a cat who’s on its second drink. A citrus wheel and a sprig of mint sit on the rim.
It’s a home-bar piece first, and a gift for the friend whose cat runs the house second. The wooden bar runs the full width of the bottom edge, so it frames up with a solid, grounded base. At 12.0“ x 11.3“ on 14-count it’s close to square and fits a 16“ x 16“ frame with a generous mat. The thick black outlines keep it bold and readable — this is a design that’s meant to make people smile from across the room. For a second home-bar piece, our Sloth with a Coconut Cocktail has the same drink-in-hand humor.
The cat itself is easy: big tabby stripes in 3826 Golden Brown (2,719 stitches), cream 950 Desert Sand (2,856) and 3827 Golden Brown Pale (2,367). The Advanced rating comes from the cocktail. The glass is built from seven pale greens and whites — 928, 164, 14, 470, 15, 704 and 3865 — in an area about 34 stitches wide, and they shade into each other one or two stitches at a time.
Card the seven glass greens in order from lightest to darkest before you start and label each with its symbol from the chart — several of them (14 Apple Green Pale, 3865 Winter White, 928 Gray Green Very Light) are close enough that they’re hard to tell apart off the skein. Stitch the cocktail in one session, color by color within that small area. The eyes are only 47 stitches of 3013 and 3348, at the top of the face; doing them before the surrounding stripes makes it easier to keep the gaze lined up. For more comic animals, see our funny animal round-up.
Choose your paper size and color or black & white, then download the Ginger Cat with a Citrus Cocktail PDF chart and thread list — free, no sign-up.
