Book Review: Cross Stitch Flowers

The Dover Pocketbook Collection book Cross Stitch Flowers is a collection of floral designs by Gerda Bengtosson, reflecting the handworks of the Danish embroidery tradition. Haandarbejdets Fremme, known elsewhere as Danish Design, was a movement begun in 1928 to preserve and promote embroidery in the country.

The book includes 26 charts and a section on materials and basic instructions. The patterns are shown in a color chart on one page and include a thread palette and section for notes on the opposite page. The general descriptions of colors are used, such as dull blue green or earth color, rather than giving a DMC number or the code from a different thread company. This does allow you more wiggle room to use what you have but you may not necessarily end up with the same look the designer was going for.

That doesn’t really matter, though, and there are no photos of the finished stitched designs, just the charts, so it’s easy to go your own way and choose whatever colors you like. (There’s also space in the palette or in the notes section where you could write down the colors you use in case you want to duplicate the design in the future.)

The charts are large and have dark lines every 10 stitches or rows doe ease in reading. They look hand colored, and they only use full stitches so they should be relatively easy to stitch even though some of them are big. It would have been nice for the patterns to say approximately how big the finished design would be on different sizes of fabric so you know what you’re getting into without having to do the math yourself.

The patterns show a variety of flowers, from common plants like daisies and dandelions to snow gentian, plantain and Iceland poppy, to name a few. Most designs have around 8-10 different colors.

I feel like a lot of stitchers would want to see stitched versions of projects before they start stitching, but if you’re OK with just looking at the chart to decide what you want to stitch, this is a nice collection of floral patterns to stitch and a bare-bones book that allows you to focus on the charts without a lot of frills.

About the book: 64 pages, paperback, 26 patterns. Published 2025 by Dover Publications. Suggested retail price $9.99.

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35+ Sunflower Cross Stitch Patterns

Traditional cross stitch designs and samplers with a primitive twist are the specialty of The Sub Rosa Design, an Etsy shop based in Hungary.

The largest section in the store is the Halloween/Thanksgiving section, which includes plenty of witches, crows and pumpkins. One that caught my eye is called Pumpkin Angel, a primitive design that looks like a woman with a pumpkin head with wings standing by a gate with pots of sunflowers.

The design is 199 by 67 stitches, which comes out to about 6.8 by 4 inches/17.5 by 10 cm stitched on 32 count linen as shown.

There are also a lot of Christmas patterns, heavy on Santa and snowmen and reindeer. The Easter and spring section includes projects with birds, lambs and rabbits with an old-fashioned feel.

There’s also a large number of sampler cross stitch patterns, taken from historical designs with their original stitchers names and dates on them. I like Lily Hall’s floral design that was originally stitched in 1884. It’s so fun to look at these (or stitch them!) and think about the women (or more accurately probably children learning to stitch) who made the originals and what their lives were like all those years ago. And how cool it is that we’re still doing the exact same thing all these years later!

In addition to holiday and sampler themed projects, there are also patriotic (Americana) designs, a few projects with bees, and a couple of patterns called Sweet Rosie, which seems to be a character stitched in the projects.

You can check out all of their designs at The Sub Rosa Design. If you check them out I’d love to know what patterns you try and how it goes for you!

Have a cross stitch designer you love who should be in the spotlight? Let me know in the comments.

[Photo: The Sub Rosa Design]

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