Designer Spotlight: Patterns by Anna11

I’ve mentioned before that sometimes when I pick designers to write about for this spotlight feature I leave myself notes about what I want to talk about. For Patterns by Anna11, I wrote “grumpy cat birthday.”

What I meant was that I wanted to talk about this cat cross stitch pattern of a pretty grumpy looking cat in a party hat and holding a balloon. This is pretty much how I feel about birthdays, so it caught my eye.

The project is 114 by 120 stitches, and it uses 21 colors. The pattern notes suggest the size for a few different sizes of fabric, but at 14 count it comes out to 8.2 by 8.6 inches, or 20.7 by 21.8 cm. The pattern uses only full stitches.

This project, while it delights me, isn’t actually that representative of what’s going on in this shop. There’s a lot of Disney and Harry Potter inspired projects, including a cool “magic letters” alphabet (there’s also at least part of a floral alphabet, a baby animal alphabet, as well as those using Stitch and Moana).

There are a bunch of pretty mushroom patterns, a variety of floral wreaths and other designs for wedding announcements, a super cute reading dragon, a set of Pokemon designs and more.

I don’t know that there’s a common thread that ties it all together. Lots of characters you’ll know in designs inspired by their looks in movies, but also other cute stuff, floral designs, nature and of course some Christmas designs as well.

You’ll have to go check it out at Patterns by Anna11 on Etsy to see if anything strikes your fancy.

And if there’s a cross stitch designer you love I haven’t featured yet, drop a note in the comments or send me their info through the form at the “submit a DIY” link up at the top of the page.

[Photo: Patterns by Anna11]

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Designer Spotlight: Mamida Pattern

To celebrate back to school season, I wanted to make a fun and useful cross stitch pattern, so I decided on this cross stitch pencil bookmark.

It’s a really easy pattern even though it calls for six colors. You definitely don’t have to use all the colors if you don’t want to, and you can use different colors to make a colored pencil instead of the traditional yellow one.

These sorts of projects always end up taking longer than I imagined they would in my head, because I just don’t stop to do the math of exactly how many stitches are in a piece that’s 23 stitches by 74 rows (1,702, though not every single one of them is covered, most of them are).

But because the coloring of the chart is so straightforward, I’d say it also doesn’t take as long as 1,700 stitches sounds, if that makes sense. Because you barely have to count anything and could make most of it without consulting the chart, you can get into a groove pretty easily and stitch whole sections in a single sitting. I had a lot of fun stitching this one and I think you will, too.

Once the stitching is done, take a piece of felt and sew it to the back to hide the mess you’ve made and make it a nice smooth bookmark that’s easy to use in whatever book you might be reading.

This is a fun one to make for yourself or a kid in your life who is going back to school. But it would also be a fun teacher appreciation gift or holiday gift, especially for an English teacher but really anyone would like this one I think.

You can grab the free chart and get all the instructions for assembling your own cross stitch pencil bookmark over at Our Daily Craft.

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