Designer Spotlight: Crystal Feather Crafts

If you like landscapes, animals and floral cross stitch patterns with a big does of cuteness, odds are good you’ll find something you want to stitch at Crystal Feather Crafts. This Etsy shop has more than 200 patterns with a focus on nature and often a cute touch.

For example in the animals section you’ll find adorable little dinosaurs, lots of sweet cats and a corgi butt. I love the maneki neko cat shown here, which really pops on dark blue fabric but would be pretty on whatever color you have handy.

This design is 74 by 102 stitches, which comes out to 5.3 by 7.3 inches on 14 count fabric (or 13.4 by 18.5 cm).

In addition to adorable animals you’ll find some pretty standard landscapes (heavy on the mountains), dainty floral designs and some bees, butterflies, moths and other insects that are more realistic than the other animals.

There are also some sweet holiday patterns for Christmas and Halloween (love all those cute little ghosts!), and a few more general autumn ones as well (featuring mushrooms, pumpkins and the like). A handful of other patterns are listed as being for the home, funny (a few cartoony sushis here among other things), alphabets and more.

If you like their designs as of this writing you can get 30 percent off your purchase when you buy three patterns at the same time. Check them out at Crystal Feather Crafts.

And if you are a cross stitch designer or you know a cross stitch designer you would like to see featured here at Craft Gossip, let me know in the comments. Or you can drop me a link and some more information about what makes you/them special by filling out the form you get when you click “suggest a craft” at the middle top of the page. Thanks for your help!

[Photo: Crystal Feather Crafts]

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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