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]

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Butterfly Cross Stitch Patterns

One of the most common supplies for cross stitch, aside from fabric, needles and floss, is an embroidery hoop. A hoop isn’t needed for every project, and indeed there are some stitchers who prefer not to use them at all. I generally don’t use a hoop when I’m working on a small cross stitch project, especially something that’s shape isn’t conducive to using a hoop (like a bookmark).

But embroidery hoops can be really helpful for cross stitch because they hold your fabric at an even tension, which allows you to stitch more evenly without any more work on your part. It’s great for beginners to use hoops because the tension on the fabric can both help make your stitches more even and make the holes in the fabric a little easier to see.

I’ll admit to always just buying whatever hoop is available in the right size when I’m ready to start a project without giving it much more thought than that. But there are things you should consider when choosing among the different kinds of hoops, which Caterpillar Cross Stitch covers in their great guide to embroidery hoops.

The post walks you through wooden, plastic, spring tension and flexi hoops (which I’ll admit to having never heard of; they’re made of vinyl and plastic apparently), as well as Q-Snap frames, which aren’t really hoops because they’re made of plastic tubes that you snap together in the size and shape you need.

It also covers what size hoop you should use for the project you’re working on and how to actually use a hoop in the right way.

Whether you’re new to cross stitch or more seasoned, you’re sure to pick up a tip or a product to try in this post, so go check it out over at Caterpillar Cross Stitch.

Do you have a favorite kind of embroidery hoop to use for cross stitch, or do you go without? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

[Photo: Caterpillar Cross Stitch]

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