Designer Spotlight: Cross Stitch By Coconut

If you love little cross stitch patterns, you’re going to have a lot of fun looking through the more than 150 designs on offer from Etsy seller Cross Stitch by Coconut.

The largest category on this Japanese designer’s shop is for gift tags, which of course could be stitched up as minis or in little collections in a frame instead. There are Christmas tags, military-themed projects, cats, other cute animals, fireworks and more in these collections.

Another large category, and the one that first caught my eye, is bookmarks. Here you’ll find lots of cute little bookmark designs, including Alice in Wonderland theme, dinos, mermaids and more. These little crabs shown here would be perfect for a summer reading bookmark.

The pattern uses just two colors and easily fits a two-inch wide bookmark blank (or a piece of regular cross stitch fabric cut to fit). The design is 26 by 85 stitches, or 1.86 by 6.07 inches (4.7 by 15.4 cm). This would be so cute on pale blue or off-white/sand colored fabric.

In addition to gift tags and bookmarks, there are other little patterns focusing on holidays (mostly Christmas and Valentine’s Day); animal designs, many with a Japanese twist; and an array of alphabet fonts you can use in any of your cross stitch projects.

In addition to the individual patterns, the shop also offers a few pattern bundles, including animal patterns, bookmarks and an array of 1.5 inch/3.8 cm mini cross stitch patterns. There are also a few Christmas themed mini bundles (the spooky Christmas mini collection might be my favorite.

Check out all this shop has to offer at Cross Stitch by Coconut.

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[Photo: Cross Stitch by Coconut]

Next Pattern:

25 Christmas Bookmark Cross-stitch Patterns

I am known to be really paranoid when it comes to cutting cross stitch fabric for a project. I will math it out, count, recount, think about it, worry, decide it needs to be bigger than math plus my already large margin for error suggests. If I could just be confident in choosing the correct size of fabric I’d have a lot more stitching time!

Sometimes you have a lot of extra fabric beyond where you are stitching because your fabric is too big. Or maybe you’re just working on a big project that leaves excess fabric potentially in your way when you are stitching.

Hannah Hand Makes has a post all about how to deal with excess fabric on the sides of a large cross stitch project (which is actually a podcast if you’d rather listen). She is talking more about huge stitchalong projects where you need a big piece of fabric than my particular problem of timid cutting, but the same advice applies.

I am lazy and don’t want to buy new products, so I would probably devise some sort of rolling and clamping situation with items I already have in the house, but she has some great tips for actual products you can buy that will help with this situation such as large hoops, standing frames and scroll frames. One of these solutions would certainly be worth the investment if you’re doing a year long (or otherwise long term) stitchalong or really big project where that excess fabric is going to cause problems.

Because beyond being annoying, odds are good I’m going to end up stitching right through that extra fabric and making a big mess.

Check out all the tips for working with a really big piece of cross stitch fabric over at Hannah Hand Makes.

What’s the biggest cross stitch project you’ve ever made? I’d love to hear all about it!

[Photo: Hannah Hand Makes]

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