Designer Spotlight: Mrs. Peggoty Arts

If you like your cross stitch projects with a literary twist, you’re sure to love the Etsy shop of Mrs. Peggoty Arts. This shop based in Italy describes itself as being “where art meets literature and other incredible things.” Let’s take a deeper look.

The shop as of this writing has more than 50 cross stitch patterns covering a range of literary figures. You’ll find (as a rather random sample) Miss Marple, Dorian Gray, the Dodo from Alice in Wonderland, Mr. Knightley, Willy Wonka, Anne of Green Gables. Captain Nemo, Aslan and Jo March from Little Women. There’s an emphasis on children’s literature including several designs from Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, as well as lots of English literature such as characters from the Brontes.

Because I’m a big fan of Matilda (both the book and the character) I picked her design as a sample to show you. Most of them are similar to this, though, with an ornate border and the character with their name somewhere in the design. Here Matilda almost looks like she’s juggling books, which seems appropriate if you’re familiar with the character.

This particular design is 130 by 184 stitches and uses whole stitches only in 22 colors. On 14 count fabric it will measure 9.29 by 13.14 inches, or 23.6 by 33.3 cm. The whole background is stitched but if you wanted to make it a little easier for yourself you could use colored fabric and not stitch all of the background. Totally up to you!

There are also some smaller cross stitch patterns, also with a literary twist. There are also TV and movie cross stitch patterns, if your taste runs more to Jessica Fletcher or Elvira as well as historical figures like Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe and Henry VIII.

In addition to these fun cross stitch patterns, Mrs. Peggoty also has great literary and pop culture themed coloring pages to download and print, and some of her designs are available as paint by number patterns, too.

Check out Mrs. Peggoty Arts on Etsy to see all the fun stuff!

[Photo: Mrs. Peggoty Arts]

I’ve done embroidery on paper before and it’s a lot of fun. You can use a needle to punch out a particular shape to stitch, or my favorite thing is to take a copy of an old photograph or a page from a magazine and add stitched details to the original picture.

One thing I haven’t tried but would also be fun to do is cross stitching on paper.

This is a technique that requires a fair amount of preparation because you need to find a pattern you can easily transfer and print it at actual size, then use the pattern itself to help you decide where to put the holes in your paper. And then after all that you can do your stitching.

It’s a pretty straightforward process, but Crewel Ghoul has a great tutorial that walks you through how to do it step by step. It even includes a sample pattern you can print out and try for practice.

The post also has tips for starting and finishing your threads so that the back looks as neat as it can, if that’s something that’s important to you. (When I have done embroidery on paper I usually just tape the thread end to the back. If the back were going to show I’d probably just cover it with more paper.)

Stitching on paper is a fun way to make bookmarks or greeting cards, but you also need to make sure your paper is thick enough to support the holes you’ll be making in it. This post has a good rundown of materials you’ll need and what kind of paper is best. She used watercolor paper but I’ve used card stock and scrapbook paper that was a little thicker than the average printer paper.

You can always test a little on the paper you’re considering to make sure it will stand up to the project.

Check out the post, which includes a video, over at Crewel Ghoul for more tips for cross stitching on paper. Is this something you’ve tried before? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Crewel Ghoul]

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