Designer Spotlight: Cotton Clara

This cheerful shop specializes in little, colorful designs, with a bit of a pop culture twist (and more than a few designs that have to do with food). Let’s check out Cotton Clara!

This shop based in the UK sells cross stitch charts, embroidery kits, sewing kits and craft supplies. The cross stitch patterns are all in one category, but there are only about 50 of them, so it doesn’t take too long to scroll through and see what’s on offer.

There are a few bookmarks with a variety of themes, including books, mushrooms and tea, but most of the patterns are small hoops.

I’m not actually a Swiftie but I feel like the I Love Taylor pattern is pretty indicative of the style and use of color you’ll find on the patterns here. The pattern apparently comes with other motifs and lettering so you can profess your love for Christmas or add words related to being born or married in a particular year. (I assume there’s a full alphabet but can’t tell for sure.)

It looks like the pattern uses about 10 colors, which you could of course change if you don’t love the pastel look. There are also other cross stitch sweaters on the page that have different sweater designs and include different motifs if there’s something else you are looking for.

I mentioned food above so I guess it’s time to talk about the food cross stitch patterns. I see choc spread, pickles in a jar, cherries, peanut butter, olives, kimchi, jam and more, which would be cute to stitch up for a friend who loves that kind of food.

You’ll also find some animals, Christmas designs, and a few text based designs as well.

Check out all the cute designs (and more goodies for stitchers) at Cotton Clara.

[Photo: Cotton Clara]

As a knitter, I love a good sheep motif, so let’s take a look at some cute sheep cross stitch patterns.

If you want to stitch a little sheep, this mini square from Good Dog Needleworks is a nice choice. It uses just three colors and measures 32 by 32 stitches. That’s 2.2 inches or about 5.5 cm square if you stitch it on 14 count fabric.

I also love these two little sheep, which you can stitch together or in individual hoops and shown. The designs are form Threadbound Art and use six colors. They are slightly different in size, with one being 21 by 17 stitches and the other 21 by 20. They fit in four inch frames if you work them on 14 count fabric.

You can stitch a sweet sheep bookmark with this design from Kits by SA Stitch. This is not for the person who doesn’t like back stitch, because there’s a lot of that here, but it is really cute. It measures 30 by 91 stitches and uses 10 colors. That will make your bookmark about 2.4 by 6.5 inches, or 6 by 16.5 cm on 14 count fabric.

Stitch a pretty scene of sheep in a meadow with this design from Motok Nytok. It uses 21 colors and the design is 99 by 73 stitches. On 14 count fabric that makes it about 7.07 by 5.21 inches, or 17.96 by 13.24 cm.

This yarn full of cross stitch sheep has a bit of a knitting twist because the sheep all look like they have sweaters on. The design is from Soda Stitch Design and it measures 179 by 216 stitches. The full design uses 27 colors. On 14 count fabric it will work out to 12.78 by 15.42 inches, or 32.48 by 39.19 cm.

Another great one with a knitting theme is this one where the wool is coming off the sheep and straight onto the needles. This one is from Happy Cross Stitchers and uses 12 colors. The pattern is 137 by 137 stitches, which comes out to 9.7 inches or 24.86 cm square on 14 count fabric. This would be a fun one to stitch for the knitter in your life (even if that is you).

Or you can stitch the field of sheep of a knitter’s dreams with the Happy Sheep chart from Charts and Stuff. These per-colored sheep can be stitched as shown or worked in any colors you like. The eyes are French knots but you can just stitch them in white if you’d rather.

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