A New Skill for the New Year: Embroidering Your Handwriting

We often want to add letters to our cross stitch projects, whether to add a word or a date or a person’s initials. But it’s not always easy to find cross stitch fonts you like that will fit into the space you need in your design.

One easy way around that is to use your own handwriting to fill in the words with embroidery.

The Craftsy blog has to how-to, plus all the different things you need to think about before you add handwriting to a project. It also shows samples of many different stitch techniques used in lettering so you can get the look you want without doing a ton of experiments.

Have you ever added embroidery to a cross-stitch or other project? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Craftsy.]

Looking for more fonts? Check these out at Fontbundles.com

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Find the Right Font for Your Cross Stitch Project

I came across the Etsy shop Bad Stitched when I was looking for bookmark cross stitch patterns and found their adorable pride bat bookmark, which I didn’t share then because I was going for more of a back to school vibe, but it’s definitely worth checking out if you love rainbows and bats.

This Etsy shop is big on whimsy and color, but not on organization, as there are not categories. Still, as of this writing there were only a little more than 60 patterns, so it’s small enough to scroll through.

In keeping with the theme of the bat bookmark, there are a lot of designs with animals and insects in different colors. Another one that caught my in this neon cicada with a crescent moon and stars. This one is 85 by 70 stitches and uses 16 colors. On 14 count fabric it comes out to 6 by 5 inches, or 15.4 by 12.7 cm.

You’ll also find patterns with animals such as mice, a snail, a jellyfish, a wolf, a corgi in a birthday hat, a fat seal and other bat designs. There are several mushroom designs, a pirate frog, and a scuba diving ghost (among other ghostly designs). You’ll find cats and mythical characters, a mouse thinking about eating strawberries and more.

There’s also an ebook full of mushroom designs, and another of creepy creatures for Halloween and beyond. There’s also a Pantheon bundle, full of gods, goddesses, characters from mythology, three amphora designs and a Greek inspired font.

If these sorts of designs sound like something you’d like to stitch, check out Bad Stitched on Etsy.

Know of a cross stitch designer (or are you a cross stitch designer) who should be featured in the designer spotlight? Let me know by leaving a comment or sending a note through the “suggest a DIY” link at the top of the page.

[Photo: Bad Stitched]

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