Designer Spotlight: Embrovia

Embrovia is a cross stitch designer with a lot of funny designs, plenty of ghosts and cats and other fun things for you to stitch. Let’s take a closer look.

I love the story of this shop, which I hope is true and not made up by AI, that it’s run by a husband who made cross stitch designs for his wife and then opened a shop. We’re just going to believe it’s true, OK?

The biggest category on their storefont is called “funny,” and that makes sense because there are a lot of funny designs here. From a duck with a knife to a dog on a toilet, there are lots of options here to stitch for that person on your list with a slightly off sense of humor.

When I saw this caution: floor is lava design I knew that was the one I needed to share with you all. It uses six colors and measures 130 by 135 stitches. On 14 count fabric that comes out to 9.3 by 9.6 inches, or 23.7 by 24.6 cm. It only uses full cross stitches.

Another big section is the one devoted to cats. This includes some more realistic looking cats, cat ghosts and superheroes, cats in coffee cups (or with coffee cups) and cats at computers. Other animals also feature in their designs, including bunnies, dogs, birds, capybaras, butterflies and more.

There’s a pretty collection of floral patterns, and a nice set of patterns designed to be stitched on dark canvas (mostly black or red). Rounding out the offerings are designs focused on gaming, mountains, abstract/modern designs, patterns and mandalas and designs for the nursery.

Check out all their fun designs at Embrovia on Etsy.

Have a favorite shop you’d like to see in the designer spotlight? Let me know in the comments or click on “suggest a craft” at the top of the page and tell me about it!

[Photo: Embrovia]

One of the easiest ways to make a cross stitch project more personal is to add text to it. Whether you’re adding the names of people getting married to a generic floral cross stitch design, birth information to a project on theme with the new baby’s room or just adding a word or phrase that’s meaningful to you, adding words to cross stitch projects make them that much more special.

But if you’re not working with a project that already has text built in, or you want to change the text that’s there, that can feel a little daunting.

Caterpillar Cross Stitch has a great guide to adding names and words (as well as numbers) to projects, which talks you through what to consider and how to actually go about adding text to a cross stitch project successfully.

You’ll need to think about what kind of font you want to use and if you’re using back stitched letters or larger filled letters, how much space you need and how the letters work together in the text you’re planning to make sure it’s readable.

Their post includes common pitfalls such as running out a space or ending up with text that’s off center and how to avoid them (spoiler: chart out your text before you stitch!).

The whole post is really helpful if you’ve never added lettering to a project before and don’t know where to start. I like to use block letters in back stitch when learning how to add text to cross stitch, but of course there are tons of lettering options. Check out this collection of cross stitch fonts if you want to see some different things you can try.

And head over to Caterpillar Cross Stitch to get more tips for how to successfully add lettering to your cross stitch projects. They also have their own alphabet and number charts you can buy to add text to your stitching.

Have you ever added text to a cross stitch project? I’d love to hear how it went!

[Photo: Caterpillar Cross Stitch]

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