Book Review: Merry Stitchmas

It might seem a little early (if you’re reading this when I’m writing this) to be thinking abut the holiday season, but cross stitching takes time, and if you want to stitch a bunch of gifts or decor for the season, that’s going to take some time.

Merry Stitchmas by Emma Congdon is here to inspire you to get your holiday stitching started, with 24 fun and colorful designs. You’ll find wall hangings, ornaments, stockings, bunting, greeting cards and gift tags, cute letters made out of decorated gift boxes, another set of drop shadow letters, stylized snowflake hoop art and more.

There are folk art figures, a festive patchwork and plenty of word art, with lots of bold and not always traditional colors to go around.

Some of my favorites include the bold graphic lettering on the ho, ho, ho bunting banner and the collection of little stamps, which she shows all stitched together but would also be cute stitched as individual gift tags or you could even make a stitched card with a fabric envelope and use one of these as a stamp.

The charts are large and colorful and provide options for personalization and spelling preferences. One design says “My favorite color is Christmas lights” and it includes charts for both British and American spellings. Rows are numbered and the color key is in the center of the page spread, which could make it a little hard to read (I reviewed this in PDF so I’m not sure if the margin is big enough to keep the key out of the gutter).

The back of the book includes instructions for how to stitch and read charts as well as making up instructions for finishing projects in the various ways shown in the book such as a wall hanging, framed picture, stockings, a pillow, hoop art and gift tags. There are also templates in the back for the shapes used.

This is a sweet book for people who like their holiday decor a little traditional but a little modern at the same time.

About the book: 136 pages, paperback, 24 patterns. Published 2025 by David & Charles. Suggested retail price $24.99.

I don’t usually cross stitch text or add words to my cross stitch projects. Sometimes I will sign things using basic block lettering worked in backstitch (luckily my initials are pretty easy to stitch), but if you give your cross stitch as a gift or otherwise want to personalize it, adding text is a great way to go.

But if a project didn’t already come with text, and you don’t want to draw your own, you’ll need a good cross stitch font that you can use for your project.

I like collecting fonts that are easy to read and to stitch and that would be good for lots of different uses.

For example I really like this bold alphabet font from Cross Stitch with Art, which has both capital and lowercase letters as well as numbers if you need them for dates or other information on your design. The capital letters are an inch/2.5 cm/14 stitches tall, which makes it easy to figure out how much space you need to leave for them. It’s a nice, basic, readable serif font you can use for lots of project.

If you want a script font that’s still really readable, check out Magic Calligraphy from Soft Pattern Designs. This hand drawn font has upper case letters around 28 stitches tall, with lower case letters mostly being around 20 stitches (though the ones that go up or down a lot like f, p and y are bigger). The numbers also vary a bit in size but range from 25 to 29 stitches.

Sometimes you just want a classic font that looks like sports lettering, and in that case you’re going to need Varsity, an all caps font from Stitch Mod. This one has letters that are 21 stitches tall, and it includes capital letters and numbers. But there are definitely times this one would come in handy!

Another sometimes useful and really cute font is this alphabet block letters alphabet from Stitch Junction. These letters are all upper case and look like classic building blocks, and there are also numbers available. This one would be perfect for a birth announcement project or some other cross stitch for the baby’s room.

And if that’s not enough for you, check out this post with 85 free cross stitch fonts for you to try!

Have you read?