Designer Spotlight: Little Dove Samplers

When I was casting about Etsy to find a designer to spotlight this week, I landed on Little Dove Samplers and felt like this might have been a designer that I showcased before. It turns out that I shares a summer sampler of theirs a couple of years ago, but I remembered the bright and cheerful designs, which once again drew me into their world.

This UK based designer does a lot of colorful sampler patterns, with a focus on seasons and holidays. In fact, speaking of that summer design, you can actually purchase a set of all four seasons, which have coordinating designs so they could be displayed together, or change out the season when appropriate throughout the year. There’s also a more rustic design that has all four seasons in one piece if you prefer that look.

Of course it’s not all seasons and holidays at Little Dove Samplers, though that is a lot of it. Another pattern that caught my eye is The Sewing Room, shown above. This colorful design features buttons, threads, a quilt top, a sewing machine and a black cat lounging on a pile of fabric. There’s even a basket of yarn under the chair. It’s like she was peeking in my craft room when she designed this (I knit, sew and have a black cat who loves to hang out under the sewing table).

The design is 114 by 133 stitches, or 8 by 9.5 inches (20.3 by 24.1 cm) on 14-count fabric. I am thinking hard about making this one for my crafty space!

Some of the patterns have kitted options like this pretty butterfly sampler. (I’m not seeing one for the sewing room pattern.)

They also have a couple of granny square crochet afghan patterns if you like doing other crafts, too.

Check out all the designs they have to offer at Little Dove Samplers on Etsy.

If you have a shop, or have a shop you love that you’d like to see featured here, let me know about it by clicking on the “suggest a DIY” link at the top of the page.

[Photo: Little Dove Samplers]

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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