Designer Spotlight: Giselle’s Cross Stitch

Giselle’s Cross stitch is a sweet Etsy shop based in Sweden with a focus on holiday designs and items from nature.

The biggest category in the shop is Christmas, and it’s filled with cute nutrcrackers, snowflakes and Christmas houses. I like this Baking Christmas Bright pattern, which would be super cute added to the pocket of an apron or made for a grandparent who likes to bake with the grandkids.

It uses 14 colors and is 99 by 70 stitches. On 14 count fabric that comes out to 7.1 by 5 inches, or 18 by 12.7 cm. She says that it only took her five or six days to stitch this one, but I think it would take most of the rest of us a bit longer!

There’s also a general holiday section that includes Easter, Valentine’s Day, and a project for mom or dad. The Halloween patterns include a cute Halloween greenhouse, some cheeky ghosts and the Grim Reaper, among other things.

Another large category on the site is the nature one, which has a butterfly, some floral patterns, geese, a frog and some cute fall-themed samplers with mushrooms, foxes and rabbits.

You can also get a little Gothic with a series of potion bottle cross stitch patterns, a ghost chasing bubbles and an ambigram of the word witch (an ambigram is like a visual palindrome, so the word looks the same right side up and upside down).

Or stitch up some food. This section is heavy on fruit and I love the series of fruits that are made of the word for the fruit in the shape of the fruit. There are also some salty quotations, cute bookmarks and other fun designs, so check it all out at Giselle’s Cross Stitch on Etsy.

Have a favorite designer you’d like to see in the spotlight? Let me know in the comments!

[Photo: Giselle’s Cross Stitch]

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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