Designer Spotlight: Durene J Cross Stitch

I feel like I have shared a lot of British designer Durene J Cross Stitch’s patterns before, so it seemed like high time to share their Etsy shop as a designer spotlight.

When I think of Durene’s designs, I think of holiday inspired patterns with a cute, cartoony feel. They are whimsical and fun and super cute.

And while it’s true that a lot of her designs do focus on holidays, plenty of them do not, and here you’ll find a lot of cute animals, flower fairies, projects with a beach theme and more.

She does a lot of these large hoop cross stitch projects like the one shown here. This modern tulip design has the feel of a mandala or like looking at flowers through a kaleidoscope. It has a max stitch count of 163 by 163 stitches, and comes out to 11.6 by 11.6 inches or 29.6 cm when stitched on 14 count fabric. The listing doesn’t indicate how many colors it uses but there are at least nine.

But if you like seasonal stitching you should definitely take a look at hear seasonal patterns, too. Most of them are for Christmas, including cross stitch stocking patterns, but there are a good number for Halloween as well.

Another thing that’s really cool in her pattern collection is three-dimensional projects such as ornaments, candle mats, pouches, and even a cute Halloween bowl made with cross stitch on the outside and fabric on the inside.

For these projects you not only get the cross stitch charts but all the instructions for finishing the project including any templates you need to complete it. These would be fun to get as gifts for a stitching friend and make your own kit for them to finish the project.

Check out all of their fun stuff (including hardanger and embroidery projects, too) at Durene J Cross Stitch on Etsy.

[Photo: Durene J Cross Stitch]

If you’re someone whose favorite color is all of them, or you know someone like that (in my world it’s my daughter!) this color wheel bouquet cross stitch pattern is one you might enjoy stitching.

It’s from Works by ABC and it features a rainbow of flowers stitches around the outside, with smaller flowers on the inside and a multicolored design in the middle that could be another flower but I’m not really sure what it’s supposed to be.

The flowers are in 16 colors, and the full pattern uses 18 colors (with the addition of the green stems and the color of the petals and vines that go around the flowers).

The design is 133 by 133 stitches, which comes out to 9.5 inches square (or 24.13 cm) when worked on 14 count fabric or 28 count over two threads. The pattern listing includes sizing for other counts if you want to make the project a little smaller. The sample was actually worked on 32 count linen, which is the same as 16 count Aida and comes out to 8.3 inches/21 cm.

Despite all the colors I feel like this wouldn’t be too difficult a project to stitch because the flowers are all the same so as long as your count is right on the first one you should be able to stitch them all the same. And it’s so much more fun than a regular color wheel for an art room or to stitch for an artist in your life.

You can grab the pattern from Works By ABC on Etsy.

Something about all the colors on this one (and that the designer also has temperature cross stitch patterns, I suppose) reminds me of temperature projects. This one has too many flowers to document a year, but if you’re looking for a temperature project I’ve collected a bunch of temperature cross stitch patterns, including one by this same designer that also uses flowers. So fun!

[Photo: Works By ABC]

Have you read?