Designer Spotlight: October House Fiber Arts

October House Fiber Arts began with spinning fiber and knitwear designs, but has expanded over the years to include a large line of cross stitch patterns. (Unrelated: they’re based in Arkansas, same as me!)

A lot of their designs are shown as small pillows, which could be used for decor or as pincushions, but of course you could frame them as well.

It could be winter coming on where I live but I’m especially drawn to the Strawberry Faire pattern, shown above. It’s so cute with the strawberry and a bird that’s probably about to eat the strawberry at any moment, even though it is bigger than they are. The texture on the strawberry is a lot of fun.

The pattern measures 91 by 62 stitches, and is shown worked on 30 count linen. It calls for Classic Coloworks and Weeks Dyeworks threads, but conversion to DMC is included. It uses 10 colors. As stitched the project is about 6 by 4 1/8 inches.

As you might guess, there are lots of sampler-style patterns, too, even an Arkansas themed one, though of course you could change the wording and the year to make it your state and whatever year you’re stitching it, or whatever year you moved there, or use your last name and the year of your wedding, or your child’s name and their year of birth, whatever you like!

And because of the knitting connection, there are patterns related to knitting and spinning as well as cross stitch. The Knitter’s Alphabet may be my favorite. It features all the letters of the alphabet, the words knit and purl, and plenty of knitting related motifs like an alpaca and a sweater.

The website includes a blog and a few tutorials to help you with specific projects. And there are a few cute freebie cross stitch patterns (and knitting patterns!) too.

[Photo: October House Fiber Arts]

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14 Strawberry Cross Stitch Patterns

I recently came across a post from Lord Libidan talking about embroidery floss packs and whether it’s worth the money to buy a set of threads all at once instead of one skein at a time.

With the closure of Joann some people were buying these bundles as a way to build their stash/stockpile if they didn’t have another place to buy locally. I did the same thing when I first started cross stitching again after a break of many years, because I wanted to get a bunch of colors all at once without the overwhelming job of picking colors from the wall of thread when I didn’t have a particular project in mind.

And I think for this purpose buying a package with colors you like or some basic/popular colors is probably a good idea and relatively cost effective.

My Joann didn’t have any floss packs when it was closing (in fact it didn’t have cross stitch floss at all for a month or more, then suddenly go a bunch about a week before closing) but I might have bought one just to have the variety if they had been available.

If Amazon is going to be your source for cross stitch supplies going forward, I think buying packs of cross stitch floss when the colors make sense is definitely going to be a better deal. As I write this a pack of 36 popular colors was running $39.50, or about $1.09 a skein. I used to pay 66 cents per skein at Joann, but buying a single skein of black floss on Amazon would run you $4.29.

Herrschners sells DMC floss for $1.05 per skein or less, but shipping isn’t free and you’ll have to buy a lot (or a lot of other things, too) to meet their minimums for free shipping when they offer it.

Check out the post on Lord Libidan for his thoughts and let me know where you are buying cross stitch floss now if you used to buy it at Joann.

[Photo via Herrschners]

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