Designer Spotlight: Happy Little Mouse

I was scrolling through cross stitch patterns on Etsy the other day, as I do pretty regularly, and a design from Happy Little Mouse caught my eye, so I decided it was time to share them with you.

Happy Little Mouse is the store of Alina Pilipchuk, a Ukrainian designer with more than 350 designs in her shop.

These big, bold, colorful designs are fanciful and often include fantastic creatures, gorgeous butterflies, realistic animals and skeletons of creatures. There’s a gothic feel to a lot of the designs, which are often shown stitched on dark fabric.

There are gorgeous mushroom cross stitch patterns (which I mention because my daughter is going through a mushroom phase right now), cryptids and pop culture designs, snarky cross stitch, a few holiday patterns (and Christmas specifically), and a ton of beautiful detailed insect patterns, to name a few categories (so many great moths!).

Again because of my daughter’s interests I can’t resist sharing the Baby Yaga house cross stitch pattern, which I may very well be making her for the next gift-giving holiday I can get it done in time for. (If you don’t know Baba Yaga, she’s a character from Slavic folklore who lives in a house that stands on chicken legs.)

This design uses 14 count fabric and 23 colors. It is 71 by 113 stitches, and the final design measures 5.07 by 8.07 inches, or 12.88 by 20.5 centimeters.

Many of Happy Little Mouse’s patterns are available in bundles, such as mushrooms, forest animals and dinosaur skeletons (yes, really!). You can also buy a bundle that is the entire shop as well as all future designs, which is a great deal if you like and want to support their work. I love this set of designs for book lovers, which would be great for a kids room, or to hang in your reading nook or by your bookshelf.

[Photo: Happy Little Mouse]

If you’re looking for a ton of easy cross stitch designs to use for Christmas projects, look no further than Claire Crompton’s The Ultimate Cross Stitch Christmas Collection, which includes more than 500 charts for tiny stockings, angels, ornaments and much more.

The book covers the materials you’ll use to create the projects, how to add beads and other embellishments, stitching techniques and instructions for finishing projects shown in the book.

You’ll find ideas for using the patterns such as making greeting cards, ornaments, wall hangings, napkin rings and patches, as well as ideas for adding stitching to ready made or semi-homemade gifts. There are also tips for framing and hanging projects, making an advent calendar and designing your own Christmas sampler.

The charts are arranged by theme like Christmas classics (bells, horns and candles), garlands including stockings and mittens, Christmas carols, advent motifs with numbers to make your own calendar, St. Nicholas, nativity projects, snowmen, Santa’s sleigh, snowflakes and snow themed projects, Shaker-style Christmas designs, Santa’s helpers and reindeer, tree decorations, snowy scenes, robins and other birds, angels, Christmas trees, penguins, baby’s first Christmas, Victorian-inspired designs, sweets and treats, Christmas flowers, child themed patterns, stitches for gift tags, fairies, bears both teddy and otherwise, 12 days of Christmas patterns, projects to work on linens for the table, sentiments for cards or other projects, and several sets of alphabets and numbers you can use to design your own projects.

There’s a really cute parcel alphabet that has the letters on presents and there are also elves and a Santa worked in, which would be cute for a project for a child or to make a sign for your house.

Patterns are shown several to a page with one key for all of the projects. The projects don’t say how big they are so you’ll have to count stitches on the chart and figure out how big they will be based on the fabric you are using.

Still, this is a nice, large collection of holiday themed cross stitch designs, which is great for people who like stitching projects big and small for Christmas.

About the book: 112 pages, paperback, published 2026 by David & Charles. Suggested retail price $24.99.

Have you read?