Cross-Stitch

Charts, patterns and everything needlepoint

Designer Spotlight: SchilHaus

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Normally when I decide to write about a cross stitch designer I like them to have a good number of patterns that I can talk about. It helps you to see a range of options if you’re looking for a new designer to follow, and it gives me more to write about, which is a win. 

But I wanted to share SchilHaus with you even though they only have 11 patterns because they’re just so darn cheerful and I think we all need that. 

All of their patterns are similar in color and tone. Some are lines or squares, there are a few quilt-block-style stars, a red and green snowflake that also looks like a star and is the only project of theirs to only use two colors.

There are abstract rainbow polka dots and a colorful set of Christmas bobbles. 

The design of theirs that originally caught my eye was one full of multicolored lines, but the one I decided to write about when I was looking at their storefront most recently is the Rainbow Breeze Block. 

The pattern has these fun petal-shaped cells surrounded by black to make them really pop. There are two color options in the pattern, but what struck me about this one is that you could do it as a temperature project if you just kept repeating it until the end of the year. 

Decide on what colors you want to use for whatever it is you’re tracking and then do a petal a day. You’d need to do rows of 5 instead of 8 to make the rows even or you can leave it as 8 and have some blanks. 

(Check out more temperature cross stitch projects.)

Despite the small number of patterns I think SchilHaus is definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of color, abstract design or Christmas projects. Let me know what you think!

[Photo: SchilHaus]

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Have you read?

Cross Stitch Cards for All Occasions

I have never stitched a greeting card, but I kind of like the idea of it. It’s a card and a gift all in one, and hopefully one the recipient will hang onto for years to come. 

This collection of easy and colorful greeting card cross stitch patterns from Susan Bates (via Gathered) are a great place to start if you want to stitch your own greeting cards. 

These text-based designs cover a lot of card-sending events, such as:

  • get well soon
  • happy birthday
  • thank you
  • thinking of you
  • congratulations
  • anniversary
  • new home
  • good luck

The lettering is done in gradients and there are other details like hearts and stars, a house key and a gift, depending on the text. There are full cross stitches and back stitch on all of the cards, and they use 15 colors for the cross stitching and six for the back stitching (and just two colors are used for both, so it’s 19 colors total). 

The designs vary a bit in size but the biggest one is 52 by 67 stitches, which comes out to 3.75 by 4.75 inches or 9.5 by 12 cm when worked on 14 count fabric or 28 count evenweave. The text suggests beads are also used in the patterns but there’s no note of them in the key, so go wild and add some beads if you like. 

Designs are worked on a price of 6 by 8 inch/15 by 20 cm fabric and then mounted to a card with a colorful baking piece of card stock behind it. This is easy to assemble with whatever cardstock greeting cards you have on hand.

You can get the free charts as a PDF from Gathered. 

Have you ever stitched your own greeting cards? I’d love to hear about it, or let me know if these inspire you to try. 

[Photo: Susan Bates via Gathered]