Designer Spotlight: StitchxFinch

I generally don’t share Etsy shops that are as small as this one — it only has 24 patterns as I write this — but I did want to share it just because there’s a story behind it for me.

When I came across this shop in my scrolling, I saw this pattern for a little bird dressed like a cowboy. This caught my eye because it’s a finch that looks sort of like a character from the app Finch.

If you don’t know about Finch, it’s a self-care app where you set up different tasks that you do for yourself (the baseline is literally surviving the day, but also things like brushing teeth, making your bed, etc.) and as you do more things your little finch avatar grows and you can give it outfits and toys and it goes on adventures and it’s adorable. It also really helps people who struggle with mental health and doing the basic things, because it feels like you’re taking care of something else instead of just taking care of yourself.

Anyway, this little guy is 50 by 50 stitches, and comes out to 3.57 inches or 9.07 cm on 14 count fabric. And it’s a pretty good example of the style of the patterns StitchxFinch does.

There are cute little frogs and cats and a cow getting abducted by aliens. There are adorable little animals wielding knives for some reason. A flying pig. Anne of Green Gables. The Grim Reaper watering a plant. There’s a whole range of designs even with this small selection, but the vast majority of them involve little animals in some way.

If you like this style of cute little critters, check out StitchxFinch on Etsy. And especially if you or someone you know uses the app Finch, does this little one remind you of that?

[Photo: StitchxFinch]

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30 + Bird Cross Stitch Patterns

I have not done a lot of big cross stitch projects, but sometimes even with small projects it can be hard to decide exactly where to begin and how to work through the chart if you’re working with multiple colors. The general categories for the possible methods are known as cross country and parking.

Cross country means that you’re working one color at a time, moving around the chart (or the section of the chart you’re working on) until you’re done with that color. Parking means you’re working in a smaller section and doing all the colors in that area, “parking” the threads by leaving them attached to the canvas but out of the way while you finish each section.

Royal Rows is a specific way of parking named by Alison Royal, which is explored in detail on a post on Stitching Daily.

The idea is that you’re working one “tower” of stitches at a time (she uses a section of 10 stitches across by 20 down, but you can do whatever makes sense to you). You work all the stitches of a color at a time, starting at the top left and working your way down. When you’re done with a color you can park it where needed in the section below your current tower (known as the dungeon) or in the “east tower,” which is the section to the right.

There’s also a specific way of dealing with thread ends when you’re done with a color. This is a super simplified version (head to the blog post at Stitching Daily to get all the details) but the basic idea is that you’re working from left to right and top to bottom across the work, parking the threads in the next section when you’re done with them and systematically choosing which color to work with next.

The whole idea of parking is kind of overwhelming to me though I will admit that it makes a lot of sense. I guess I need to try it on a smallish big project and see how it goes. Do you use the parking method of cross stitch? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo via Stitching Daily]

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