Cross-Stitch

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Designer Spotlight: Stitchissimo

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Stitchissimo is an Etsy shop based in Bulgaria that has a heavy focus on bookmarks and cards, often with a religious spin, as well as adorable animal cross stitch patterns. Let’s take a closer look. 

The biggest category in the shop (though not by much) is baby animals, and there are lots of cute options, from a horse to butterflies, a capybara to sea creatures, farm animals and more. 

Since this is a year when ducks are really popular, here’s their duck cross stitch pattern, which is pretty representative of the style of these projects. This mini cross stitch design is just 27 by 33 stitches and it uses four colors, making it a great option for someone new to cross stitch (which all of the animals would be). 

On 14 count fabric the design comes out to almost 2 by 2.4 inches, or 4.9 by 6 cm, so it would fit in a three or four inch hoop. 

Coming in a close second is the bookmark section (there’s also a separate kids’ bible bookmark category), which includes a wide variety of projects often featuring flowers, fruit or some other image along with a quote from the bible. The kids’ section is the same, only with cute animals decorating them instead of flowers. 

There’s also a large collection of Christmas and winter themed projects. Many have a religious bent such as nativity scenes and angels, but there are also snowmen, Christmas foods and winter scenes with cute animals. 

Other categories include sentiments to stitch for greeting cards, spring and Easter themed projects and “boy decor” (mini cross stitch patterns of vehicles). Smaller categories include summer, autumn and the Fourth of July.

These projects are cute and colorful, and a lot of them are small, which makes them great for beginners. It’s an especially great place if you like religious themed projects and bookmarks. 

Check out all the designs at Stitchissimo.

[Photo: Stitchissimo]

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Designer Spotlight: Siren Stitchworks

Siren Stitchworks has cross stitch patterns that feel like old samplers (and some of them are in fact historical reproductions) even when they are modern designs. They have patriotic patterns, biscornus, pop culture patterns and more so let’s take a look. 

One of the projects that caught my eye was the Mexican menagerie, a set of five Mexican folk art inspired creatures. There’s a bird, horses, dragons, alligators and cats on these designs, which you can make into tiny pillow or ornaments.

The pattern notes don’t say how many colors are used but it doesn’t look like any of them have more than five colors. It does note the smallest pattern is 59 by 59 stitches, and the largest is 82 by 68 stitches. They also only use full cross stitches. 

The category with the largest number of entries (which is still only 12 as of this writing; this is a small shop) is called ornaments and smalls. It includes this menagerie and another Mexican animal collection, as well as traditional looking patterns with a twist, such as a little pattern with Yule goats, a needlebook cover that looks like a tombstone and alphabet samplers that include Greek, Latin and Hebrew. 

There are also a bunch of samplers, divided into monochrome, traditional and reproduction samplers. There are some fun ones in the monochrome department, including a Titanic sampler and an aloha design with a pineapple motif. Traditional samplers include some patriotic designs (and a gorgeous folk art resist fist), as well as a really fat cat. 

And the reproduction samplers include fun fonts, florals and birds like you’d expect from old sampler designs. 

In addition you’ll find a few pop culture designs (mostly Game of Thrones inspired samplers for different houses), biscornus include a couple Chinese zodiac designs, and a few needle minders for sale. 

Check out all the fun designs at Siren Stitchworks on Etsy. 

[Photo: Siren Stitchworks]