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]

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Designer Spotlight: Stitch with Coffee

One of the most common supplies for cross stitch, aside from fabric, needles and floss, is an embroidery hoop. A hoop isn’t needed for every project, and indeed there are some stitchers who prefer not to use them at all. I generally don’t use a hoop when I’m working on a small cross stitch project, especially something that’s shape isn’t conducive to using a hoop (like a bookmark).

But embroidery hoops can be really helpful for cross stitch because they hold your fabric at an even tension, which allows you to stitch more evenly without any more work on your part. It’s great for beginners to use hoops because the tension on the fabric can both help make your stitches more even and make the holes in the fabric a little easier to see.

I’ll admit to always just buying whatever hoop is available in the right size when I’m ready to start a project without giving it much more thought than that. But there are things you should consider when choosing among the different kinds of hoops, which Caterpillar Cross Stitch covers in their great guide to embroidery hoops.

The post walks you through wooden, plastic, spring tension and flexi hoops (which I’ll admit to having never heard of; they’re made of vinyl and plastic apparently), as well as Q-Snap frames, which aren’t really hoops because they’re made of plastic tubes that you snap together in the size and shape you need.

It also covers what size hoop you should use for the project you’re working on and how to actually use a hoop in the right way.

Whether you’re new to cross stitch or more seasoned, you’re sure to pick up a tip or a product to try in this post, so go check it out over at Caterpillar Cross Stitch.

Do you have a favorite kind of embroidery hoop to use for cross stitch, or do you go without? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

[Photo: Caterpillar Cross Stitch]

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