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Designer Spotlight: Mariana Gonclaves ART

April 25, 2026 by Sarah White

The cross stitch designs from Mariana Gonclaves ART often feel like little collections, fanciful samplers of books, dogs, butterflies and flowers. Let’s take a closer look. 

The biggest category on the site is floral, which includes lots of designs that are almost like mandalas made out of flowers. Some feature flowers in one “corner” of the hoop while and insect approaches from the other side. 

I picked the wildflowers bouquet as a representative pattern, which shows you a bit what I mean about it being a collection of flowers. This one is 78 by 79 stitches, which comes out to about 5.6 inches square, or 14.3 cm, on 14 count fabric. The pattern doesn’t indicate how many colors are used, but it’s at least 10 and probably more. 

Another large pattern section ironically is called tiny, which features little images of lots of things like a whole design full of ice cream cones, coffee drinks, rubber duckies, mouse ears or tiny cakes, to name a few. 

In the small creatures section you’ll find bees, birds, butterflies and other insects, sometimes with one main image surrounded by smaller images, mandala style, with others more sampler like. 

Another category called pet lovers is full of dogs and cats, as well as a few designs of cats with books, because of course the cats hang out on your bookshelf, don’t they? (There’s also a bookmark design with cats and books which I love.)

Other categories include Christmas, bears, pasta and crystals. There’s also one called color geek that includes a color wheel, CMYK and RGB color designs and paint samplers. Good vibes is a catch all with a stitched disco ball and designs promoting your love of chocolate, coffee or pistachios.

These designs are fun, cheerful, colorful and look like they would be enjoyable to knit for yourself or someone who loves tiny stitched things and happy designs. 

Check out the whole shop at Mariana Gonclaves ART on Etsy. 

[Photo: Mariana Gonclaves ART]

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Have you read?

Easy Ways to Fancy Up Your Biscornu

The cross stitcher behind the blog Sirious Stitches is quite into biscornu.

If you’re not, a quick primer: biscornu are three-dimensional cross-stitched objects with eight points, often with an indention in the middle that makes them look a bit like doughnuts without the hole. They can be just about any size and subject you can think of. They’re often used as pincushions but can also be seasonal decor or just decoration for any time of year. 

I’ve got a collection of biscornu cross stitch patterns here. 

Once you’ve stitched one or several (they are a little addicting) you might wonder what you can add to them to make them even more extra. 

It very much depends on the design of your biscornu and the look you are going for, but Sirious Stitches has a great post all about some of the options you might consider. 

I don’t want to give you the whole list because you need to go visit and see all of their great biscornu they’ve stitched, but one really easy thing that you can do with a lot of designs is take advantage of that center indent by adding a button, beads, silk flower or another embellishment. 

This is great to do just with a basic button from your stash that coordinates with the design and colors of the cross stitching, but it’s extra fun if you have a button that’s on theme, such as a leaf for a fall biscornu or a flower shaped button for a floral design. Add a jingle bell to a Christmas pattern, or a charm if you don’t have a button that coordinates. 

Just this one idea is sure to get you thinking about ways to embellish biscornu (not to mention other cross stitch projects) but head over to Sirious Stitches to see all of their ideas for embellishing biscornu to make these already fun projects even more fun. 

Have you ever made biscornu? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Sirious Stitches]

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