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]

Siren Stitchworks has cross stitch patterns that feel like old samplers (and some of them are in fact historical reproductions) even when they are modern designs. They have patriotic patterns, biscornus, pop culture patterns and more so let’s take a look.

One of the projects that caught my eye was the Mexican menagerie, a set of five Mexican folk art inspired creatures. There’s a bird, horses, dragons, alligators and cats on these designs, which you can make into tiny pillow or ornaments.

The pattern notes don’t say how many colors are used but it doesn’t look like any of them have more than five colors. It does note the smallest pattern is 59 by 59 stitches, and the largest is 82 by 68 stitches. They also only use full cross stitches.

The category with the largest number of entries (which is still only 12 as of this writing; this is a small shop) is called ornaments and smalls. It includes this menagerie and another Mexican animal collection, as well as traditional looking patterns with a twist, such as a little pattern with Yule goats, a needlebook cover that looks like a tombstone and alphabet samplers that include Greek, Latin and Hebrew.

There are also a bunch of samplers, divided into monochrome, traditional and reproduction samplers. There are some fun ones in the monochrome department, including a Titanic sampler and an aloha design with a pineapple motif. Traditional samplers include some patriotic designs (and a gorgeous folk art resist fist), as well as a really fat cat.

And the reproduction samplers include fun fonts, florals and birds like you’d expect from old sampler designs.

In addition you’ll find a few pop culture designs (mostly Game of Thrones inspired samplers for different houses), biscornus include a couple Chinese zodiac designs, and a few needle minders for sale.

Check out all the fun designs at Siren Stitchworks on Etsy.

[Photo: Siren Stitchworks]

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