Designer Spotlight: Max Stitches Art

Max Stitches Art is an Etsy shop based in Ukraine that’s full of gothic, dark and witchy designs you’re sure to love if that’s your vibe.

The biggest section in the shop is called new, which isn’t super helpful for knowing what’s in there, but if you give it a browse you’ll get a sense for what the shop’s designs are like. Which, again, is dark (lots of these designs are literally dark because they’re shown stitched on dark fabric).

You’ll find weird things like a turtle with a terrarium on its back, a mushroom that’s really a UFO with a tractor beam for a stem, a jackalope and a cat dressed as Dracula.

One of my favorites, though it is hard to pick, is this reading frog (I’ve been on a bit of a frog and toad kick lately because they’re basically my life coaches). The pattern is 80 by 86 stitches and uses 18 colors. On 14 count fabric it comes out to 5.71 by 6.14 inches, or 14.51 by 15.6 cm.

The biggest more specific category covers animals, and again there’s a big range of projects, including a snake or a frog in a jar, a cat on the toilet reading the newspaper, a snuggly hedgehog in a sleeping bag, a ship in a bottle with an octopus and much more. A separate section is for insects, with lots of moths and ladybugs among others.

You’ll also find a lot of Christmas patterns in a similar style, with aliens, bottles, dinosaurs, cyrptids and ghosts heavily featured. There are also special sections for ghosts and skeletons, but they definitely aren’t exclusive to Halloween.

There are also witchy designs, funny quotes, kitchen themed items and more.

Check out all the designs at Max Stitches Art on Etsy. If you love it there’s also an option to buy the whole store!

[Photo: Max Stitches Art]

I don’t usually cross stitch text or add words to my cross stitch projects. Sometimes I will sign things using basic block lettering worked in backstitch (luckily my initials are pretty easy to stitch), but if you give your cross stitch as a gift or otherwise want to personalize it, adding text is a great way to go.

But if a project didn’t already come with text, and you don’t want to draw your own, you’ll need a good cross stitch font that you can use for your project.

I like collecting fonts that are easy to read and to stitch and that would be good for lots of different uses.

For example I really like this bold alphabet font from Cross Stitch with Art, which has both capital and lowercase letters as well as numbers if you need them for dates or other information on your design. The capital letters are an inch/2.5 cm/14 stitches tall, which makes it easy to figure out how much space you need to leave for them. It’s a nice, basic, readable serif font you can use for lots of project.

If you want a script font that’s still really readable, check out Magic Calligraphy from Soft Pattern Designs. This hand drawn font has upper case letters around 28 stitches tall, with lower case letters mostly being around 20 stitches (though the ones that go up or down a lot like f, p and y are bigger). The numbers also vary a bit in size but range from 25 to 29 stitches.

Sometimes you just want a classic font that looks like sports lettering, and in that case you’re going to need Varsity, an all caps font from Stitch Mod. This one has letters that are 21 stitches tall, and it includes capital letters and numbers. But there are definitely times this one would come in handy!

Another sometimes useful and really cute font is this alphabet block letters alphabet from Stitch Junction. These letters are all upper case and look like classic building blocks, and there are also numbers available. This one would be perfect for a birth announcement project or some other cross stitch for the baby’s room.

And if that’s not enough for you, check out this post with 85 free cross stitch fonts for you to try!

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