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.

One of the easiest ways to make a cross stitch project more personal is to add text to it. Whether you’re adding the names of people getting married to a generic floral cross stitch design, birth information to a project on theme with the new baby’s room or just adding a word or phrase that’s meaningful to you, adding words to cross stitch projects make them that much more special.

But if you’re not working with a project that already has text built in, or you want to change the text that’s there, that can feel a little daunting.

Caterpillar Cross Stitch has a great guide to adding names and words (as well as numbers) to projects, which talks you through what to consider and how to actually go about adding text to a cross stitch project successfully.

You’ll need to think about what kind of font you want to use and if you’re using back stitched letters or larger filled letters, how much space you need and how the letters work together in the text you’re planning to make sure it’s readable.

Their post includes common pitfalls such as running out a space or ending up with text that’s off center and how to avoid them (spoiler: chart out your text before you stitch!).

The whole post is really helpful if you’ve never added lettering to a project before and don’t know where to start. I like to use block letters in back stitch when learning how to add text to cross stitch, but of course there are tons of lettering options. Check out this collection of cross stitch fonts if you want to see some different things you can try.

And head over to Caterpillar Cross Stitch to get more tips for how to successfully add lettering to your cross stitch projects. They also have their own alphabet and number charts you can buy to add text to your stitching.

Have you ever added text to a cross stitch project? I’d love to hear how it went!

[Photo: Caterpillar Cross Stitch]

Have you read?