Designer Spotlight: Needle Minder Lair

As you might guess from the name of this Etsy shop, Needle Minder Lair sells a lot of different kinds of needle minders. We’ll get to that, but they also have a nice collection of cross stitch patterns, too, so let’s take a look!

Needle Minder Lair has a heavy emphasis on pop culture and video game designs, including Final Fantasy, Kirby, Resident Evil and Zelda. There are D&D themed designs and a section called gaming, which is more video game characters and controllers. You’ll also find an anime section and Pokemon game boy patterns, too.

There are a lot of pastels here, including in projects you might not expect to be pastel, like landscapes of Japan or witchy projects. For example, this pretty pastel rainbow plague doctor mask. The pattern measures 83 by 98 stitches, which comes out to 5.93 by 7 inches or 15.06 by 17.78 cm on 14 count fabric. It uses 11 colors and is all full stitches.

I like it on this pink background but it would look really cool on a black background, too.

In other cross stitch patterns in the shop you’ll find cats, nature and city landscapes, alphabets and kawaii patterns, which include lots of food, koi and other cute animals.

In addition to cross stitch patterns you will also find a great variety of needle minders in this shop (to review, a needle minder is a magnet and a magnetic thing that you stick to your cross stitch fabric that can then hold your needle when you aren’t stitching so it won’t fall off or make a hole in your fabric). There are single minders and sets with a bunch of themes, including animals, mermaids and tarot.

They also have some keychains, stickers and magnets, a lot of which are related to Resident Evil, but there are some other themes thrown in as well.

Check out all their goodies at Needle Minder Lair on Etsy.

[Photo: Needle Minder Lair]

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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