Book Review: 100 Mini Cross Stitch Designs

There are a lot of fun, large and challenging cross stitch designs out there, but sometimes you just want something small and simple. Little cross stitch designs are great to use on greeting cards, bookmarks, napkins and other projects, and though they don’t take a long time to stitch they are still a lot of fun.

100 Mini Cross Stitch Designs by Rosemary Drysdale has a wide range of wee designs, including holiday and seasonal designs, natural elements like mushrooms and flowers, objects like school buses and sushi, just to name a few.

The patterns are presented in full color charts that are large and easy to read. Some of the patterns are shown in projects such as a pillow covered with bees and a hive or a set of rockets framed separately to decorate a kid’s room. You can use these ideas as a jumping off point to design your own gift tags, embellished clothing or whatever else you like.

If you love cross stitch but also enjoy the instant gratification of small projects, this book is a must have!

About the book: 160 pages, paperback, 100 patterns. Published in February 2022 by GMC Publications. Suggested retail $24. Buy on Amazon.

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35+ Sunflower Cross Stitch Patterns

Through the years I’ve shared plenty of fall and especially Halloween themed cross stitch patterns, but today I wanted to look at fall projects that don’t have anything to do with spooky season. Here’s proof that pumpkins are an all fall thing, along with leaves, acorns and sunflowers.

The Pumpkin Season cross stitch pattern from the appropriately names Autumn Andrea has lots of pumpkins as well as fall flowers and leaves. The project is 280 by 235 stitches, which comes out to 20 by 16.79 inches (that’s 50.8 by 42.6 cm). If I can count properly it uses 51 colors.

Teeny Weeny X Stitch has a set of 20 fall landscape cross stitch patterns, and you can stitch up one, some or the whole bunch. There are lots of trees, a couple of streams and a could of houses out in the woods, among other views. The designs vary in size a little bit but they’re all around 40 by 44 stitches (smaller than 3.3 inches/8.3 cm) when worked on 14 count fabric. If you were to stitch all of them you would need 25 colors.

This collection of fall leaves and acorns from Box and Fox looks really familiar to me but I can’t find that I’ve shared it before so here it is. I love the graphic quality of the leaves on this one and how it feels like you could display it all the way through Thanksgiving. It is 100 by 100 stitches, or about 7.1 inches/18.14 cm square on 14 count fabric, and it uses 10 colors.

A more rustic look comes from Blueberry Ridge Design with this Autumn Gathers pattern. It’s shown on 36 count linen and has a stitch count of 145 by 125. That comes out to 8.1 by 6.9 inches, or 20.5 by 17.5 cm.

Probably my favorite of this whole bunch is the autumn bookshelf from Patterns by Rybka Stitch. This sweet shelf has fall-colored books as well as pumpkins, leaves and flowers. This one uses 27 colors as well as blends, and the design measures 88 by 81 stitches, which on 14 count fabric is 6.3 by 5.8 inches, or 16 by 15 cm.

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