Designer Spotlight: Climbing Goat Designs

Climbing Goat Designs is a UK based Etsy shop that seems like it has a little something for everyone. There are tons of Christmas patterns, and also space geek stuff. Temperature projects and cross stitch patterns devoted to lost pets. Mythical creatures and stand up paddleboarding. And that’s just what I saw on the first page.

When I first looked at this storefront before I sat down to write about it, I noted that I liked the tartan hearts design. And I still do. This set of 9 hearts features stitched versions of classic tartan designs: Black Watch, Thomson Camel, MacQueen, Ramsay Blue, MacLeod, Fraser Hunting Ancient, Royal Stewart, Hamilton Grey and MacKenzie Modern.

Stitch the whole sampler or use an individual heart to decorate a card or another project. The whole piece is 101 by 100 stitches and uses 31 different colors. That comes out to 7.2 by 7.1 inches or 18.3 by 18.1 cm. If you want to stitch an individual heart, each larger heart is 31 by 28 stitches, which makes them around 2 inches/5 cm.

By far the largest category is Christmas patterns, which range from decorated musical notes to dragons to Christmas cats, trees made out of various things (like knitting supplies, art materials or planets) as well as some more traditional designs.

Other large categories include astronomy and space, fantasy and rainbows, music, sports and vehicles and animals at home, which gives you a sense of the range of designs. Another big one is cats, dogs, pets and paws, which includes memorial designs and more general pet patterns.

The page also has a great variety of temperature cross stitch patterns, including space themed projects, hearts and other little icons. They have a variety of stitchalongs including penguins, snowflakes, Hubble telescope images and an animal tree of life.

And even all that doesn’t cover everything they offer (alphabets! custom birth announcements! zodiac designs!) so head to Climbing Goat Designs on Etsy to check it all out.

[Photo: Climbing Goat Designs]

Inkspire Studio Shops offers cross stitch patterns as well as tons of different stitch minders, scissor charms and thread organization tools.

We’ll get to all that, but since we’re mostly here for the patterns, let’s start there.

All of the patterns are in one category (called Inkspire Originals if you’re following along). There are a lot of book-themed projects and more of the designs are bookmarks than anything else. You’ll find trope bookmarks, a Reading Rainbow themed design, flowers and a super cute watercolor set bookmark, to name a few.

And while the book themed projects are by far the most numerous, I wanted to share this super cute pile of vintage Pyrex style bowls. I love the colors on this one and it should be easy to stitch because so much of it is blocks (or bowls) of a single color. This one is only available as a printed pattern, but most of them are digital.

It calls for six colors and comes out 5.6 by 6.9 inches, or 14.2 by 17.5 cm when stitched on 14 count fabric.

In addition to the bookmarks and book themed projects you’ll find a few kitchen projects and some Halloween and Christmas designs as well.

But what this shop is really about is needle minders, and there are tons of them, with all kinds of themes ranging from introverted and snarky to animal themes, food and beverages, retro designs and religious and inspiring needle minders.

If you don’t know about needle minders, these are acrylic with magnets. You stick a magnet to the back of your work, add the needle minder to the front of the work, and then it holds your sewing needle when you’re not stitching. No need for piercing your fabric or losing your needle between stitching sessions.

She also makes charms you can attach to your scissors (or use as a stitch marker if you’re a knitter or crocheter), inventory and project trackers and bags large and small to hold works in progress and other supplies. She’s also got a great collection of vintage cross stitch patterns and kits, so check out all the fun goodies at Inkspired Studio Shops.

[Photo: Inkspire Studio Shops]

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