Designer Spotlight: Non Stop Stitch

Non Stop Stitch is an Etsy shop based in Ukraine with a dizzying quantity and variety of cross stitch patterns.

They tend to the cute/whimsical and colorful, with lots of flowers, animals, fantasy designs and some classic Ukraine inspired motifs.

How about this super sweet Ukrainian boy and girl design? With folk inspired clothing and adorable animals, these characters can be stitched together on one piece or separately. The images were designed by Nadiia Nagorna. The boy measures 50 by 96 and uses 22 colors and blends, while the girl is 62 by 94 stitches and uses 27 colors and blends.

Both projects involve full and half cross stitches, as well as backstitch and French knots. They are classified as intermediate patterns.

The largest category on the site is Christmas patterns, with more than 200 options, ranging from cute animals to ornaments, Santas, snowmen and more. There are also plenty of patterns for both Easter and Halloween if you like seasonal stitches.

In addition you’ll find lots of animal designs, from bears and foxes to cats and dogs, mice and elephants, birds, bunnies and bugs. And extensive flowers and plants section includes pretty bouquet cross stitch patterns, stitched wreaths and seasonal scenes, as well as food cross stitch patterns, like a swag of chili peppers, mushrooms on a postage stamp, persimmons and cherries.

The fantasy and magic category leans heavy on whimsy with cute dragons, a one-eyed monster with dragonfly wings, a mermaid listening to music, and a green bearded river spirit covered in lily pads.

And that’s not even to mention other sections like food and drinks, houses and landscapes, lighthouses, people/babies/dolls and more. There’s so much to choose from there’s no way to really categorize it all, so why don’t you head over to Non Stop Stitch and do some scrolling. I’d love to hear if you make one of their patterns!

[Photo: Non Stop Stitch]

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]

Have you read?