Designer Spotlight: Banani Stitchery

If you’re looking for a realistic cross stitch pattern from your favorite dog or cat, you’ll want to check out Banani Stitchery. This shop is full of gorgeous designs for different breeds of cats and dogs, so you can stitch up a Norwegian forest cat or a red toy poodle or a great variety of other cats and dogs.

There are less accurate but still adorable kitten cross stitch patterns, as well as bunnies, mostly with a spring flair. There’s also a section called cute characters, which is full of other adorable animals like a owl on a stack of books, a teddy bear in the rain and a baby goat going to the airport with a coffee and a travel bag.

Many of their patterns are large, colorful and complex, but if that’s your thing there are a lot of beautiful projects here, too. I love this vintage baubles cross stitch pattern, full of classic holiday ornaments packed in a box. If you still use ornaments like this, or fondly remember ornaments that looked like this, it would be a wonderful addition to your Christmas decor.

The pattern is 160 by 197 stitches and uses a whopping 73 colors and one blend. The design comes out to 11.43 by 14.07 inches, or 29 by 35.7 cm. It uses full and half cross stitches as well as backstitch.

Another big category is flowers, where you will find lots of colorful, realistic looking florals. There are a few landscapes, vintage inspired designs like the one shown here, and collections of patterns you might want to stitch together, such as flowers in vases or little dogs.

If this sounds like your kind of cross stitch, check out all their designs at Banani Stitchery.

Know a designer you’d like to see in the spotlight? Leave a comment or fill out the form linked at the top of the page!

[Photo: Banani Stichery]

I was recently approached by Alyssa, the cross stitcher behind the Etsy shop Stitchonomy, to take a look at her cross stitch pattern subscription club, known as The Pattern Club.

I took a look around and there’s a lot of cute stuff and fun options you’ll want to check out, especially if you love themed patterns that are small, easy to stitch and fun to combine.

The Pattern Club combines cross stitching with a social network. When you open the site you’ll see a news feed and have the ability to share updates much like you would on Facebook. You can see who is online, have buddies and post your own updates and photos. The community aspect is a little sparse right now but that should only grow.

The stitch along hub is the place to find the most recent patterns and information on the current stitchalong. As of this writing the Book Lover’s stitchalong was happening, with little designs like Peter Rabbit, a skull for Hamlet and keys for Jane Eyre as well as authors including Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen.

Other pattern collections include European designs, Halloween, ocean life, an allotment garden and more. Alyssa tells me there’s a new theme every month that either she picks or members in the community suggest. You can stitch just the patterns you want or put them together to make a larger collage.

The Stitchanomini vault gives you access to all of the previous patterns, and new patterns are released daily through the stitchalong. You can download individual patterns (most of them are 19 by 19 stitches) as PDFs or Pattern Keeper files. The PDFs include a color and black and white chart as well as a floss list.

Another cool thing you can do is build your own pattern collages from all of the squares that have been released. The collage configurator allows you to add patterns of your choosing to a grid ranging from 2×2 patterns up to 4×4. You can scroll through all the current patterns or search by theme and size to make a project that suits your needs. (Above is an example I made kind of at random but you get the idea.)

If you want to check it out, you can grab a three-day free trial and see all the pattern options. Membership is $7.99 a month, or if you pay for a year at a time you’ll get two months free. In addition to the patterns in the club, members receive discounts on patterns and supplies purchased through the shop within the club. Annual members get access to three paid/retired stitchalongs and lifetime members receive all retired patterns.

If you check it out I’d love to hear what you think!

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