Cross Stitch Spotlight: MIYA Stitch

If you’re a fan of gnomes, fandoms, Halloween and all around cute cross stitch patterns, you’re going to want to check out MIYA Stitch. With more than 470 patterns as of this writing, there’s a lot of fun stuff to choose from in this Ukraine based shop for people with all sorts of favorite styles and subjects.

The largest category in this shop is gnomes, so let’s start there. Many of these are seasonal, such as fall, Halloween, Christmas, St. Patrick’s Day and other holidays and season.

Because the shop is Ukrainian I can’t resist sharing the Ukrainian gnomes, done up in yellow and gold and decorate with Ukrainian flags and sunflowers. The design is 114 by 76 stitches, which comes out to about 8.2 by 5.5 inches, or 21 by 14 cm, on 14 count fabric. This design uses 12 colors and blends.

Coming in just behind gnomes, with more than 80 patterns, is the “fandom” category, which includes everything from Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings to Anne of Green Gables and Super Mario. And that’s just on the first screen. You’ll also find characters from Good Omens, the Little Prince, Star Wars and more.

There’s also quite a lot of Halloween cross stitch patterns, which trend more to cute than creepy. There’s a goose in a pumpkin, a frog doing witchcraft, magical ghosts, potion bottles and more.

There are a lot of landscapes, animals (in particular cats), designs with female characters, houses, Christmas designs and more. In the “simple” section you’ll find a script alphabet, some cute coffee cups and some personalizable designs.

One of my favorite collections is the steampunk designs, which include steampunk-inspired designs of things like a clock, coffee grinder, motorcycle and gramophone. Of course my favorite of those is the steampunk sewing machine.

There’s even more fun stuff I haven’t mentioned like Christmas patterns, seascapes and more. Head to MIYA Stitch on Etsy to check out all the fun designs.

[Photo: MIYA Stitch]

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?