Designer Spotlight: Scared Thread Design

Sacred Thread Design is an Etsy seller based in Canada who offers lots of whimsical, watercolor-style designs, as well as sweary, snarky designs.

Sometimes it’s easier to write about a designer when they just do one kind of thing, but I’m going to try to cover as much ground here as I can.

There are letters in all sorts of styles, which would be so cute for a baby’s room or initials as a wedding present. A bunch of adorable animals, including what may be the cutest tarantula I’ve ever seen (not sharing the picture here for anyone who doesn’t like that kind of thing, but click on over if you want to see what I see).

You’ll find all sorts of flowers, cacti and mushrooms. My daughter would love this mushroom cross stitch pattern. There’s even cute food, signs of the zodiac (constellations, not their symbols) and tiny pixelated versions of famous works of art.

On of the biggest categories on their page is called quotes, but they’re mostly snarky commentary like “I was normal two kids ago” or “an apple a day keeps everyone away if you throw it hard enough” (note some of these are sweary).

Even all that doesn’t feel like it scratches the surface of all the goodies you will find in their shop. You can also purchase pattern bundles from them, including one that is all current and future patterns, if you happen to head over there and find a lot of things you like (I know I did!).

But I did have to choose one pattern to share a photo of, so I went with this tree cross-stitch pattern. I love the use of color — it has 35 colors in total — and just the feel of it is really nice to me. It measures 130 by 130 stitches, or 9.3 inches/23.6 cm on 14 count fabric.

If you check out their designs and see something you like, I’d love to here about it!

[Photo: Sacred Thread Design]

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]

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