Designer Spotlight: Stitchin Madness

Stitchin Madness is an Etsy shop based in California that has a lot of little cross stitch patterns on various themes that can be purchased separately or in bundles.

What originally caught my eye when scrolling through Etsy looking for designers to write about was their collection of United States National Park cross stitch patterns. You can buy the whole set of 63 parks, and there are design options that include just the image depicting each park (which measure 40 by 40 stitches each, or a little less than 3 inches/7.3 centimeters on 14 count fabric) or the image with the park’s name includes (that ups the size to 40 by 50, or 2.9 by 3.6 inches, which is 7.3 by 9.1 centimeters). To do the full set you’ll need 72 colors and a lot of time, but wouldn’t that be fun for someone who loves traveling the parks?

They also have a set of American state flag cross stitch patterns (though Mississippi isn’t the current flag) as well as American cities/attractions and international attractions as well.

But it’s not all tourism and state symbols here. There are also collections of insects (I love all the butterflies and moths!), mushrooms, planets, even a couple of holiday themed patterns and a few anatomical patterns with flowers (I’ll link those since you kind of need to see them to know what I’m talking about).

Most of the designs are small but they pack a lot of detail and look like lots of fun to stitch. If you’re American or from (or have visited) one of those international destinations, these patterns would be fun to stitch up as a sort of souvenir or record of places you’ve been, lived or want to travel to.

Check out all of their designs on Etsy. And if you have a shop, or have a favorite shop, that you’d like to see featured, you can send me the details by clicking on Suggest a DIY above and filling out the form.

[Photo: Stitchin Madness]

I don’t usually cross stitch text or add words to my cross stitch projects. Sometimes I will sign things using basic block lettering worked in backstitch (luckily my initials are pretty easy to stitch), but if you give your cross stitch as a gift or otherwise want to personalize it, adding text is a great way to go.

But if a project didn’t already come with text, and you don’t want to draw your own, you’ll need a good cross stitch font that you can use for your project.

I like collecting fonts that are easy to read and to stitch and that would be good for lots of different uses.

For example I really like this bold alphabet font from Cross Stitch with Art, which has both capital and lowercase letters as well as numbers if you need them for dates or other information on your design. The capital letters are an inch/2.5 cm/14 stitches tall, which makes it easy to figure out how much space you need to leave for them. It’s a nice, basic, readable serif font you can use for lots of project.

If you want a script font that’s still really readable, check out Magic Calligraphy from Soft Pattern Designs. This hand drawn font has upper case letters around 28 stitches tall, with lower case letters mostly being around 20 stitches (though the ones that go up or down a lot like f, p and y are bigger). The numbers also vary a bit in size but range from 25 to 29 stitches.

Sometimes you just want a classic font that looks like sports lettering, and in that case you’re going to need Varsity, an all caps font from Stitch Mod. This one has letters that are 21 stitches tall, and it includes capital letters and numbers. But there are definitely times this one would come in handy!

Another sometimes useful and really cute font is this alphabet block letters alphabet from Stitch Junction. These letters are all upper case and look like classic building blocks, and there are also numbers available. This one would be perfect for a birth announcement project or some other cross stitch for the baby’s room.

And if that’s not enough for you, check out this post with 85 free cross stitch fonts for you to try!

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