Designer Spotlight: TAM Stitch Designs

If you love pastels (and cross-stitched houses), TAM Stitch Designs has patterns for you. This collection of contemporary cross stitch patterns from the UK is heavy on cool colors, with calming designs involving flowers, beach scenes, little cottages and more.

The site is well organized to help you find just what you’re looking for, whether that’s a cross stitch pattern of a gnome (these are brighter colors than a lot of their designs), mandalas or fairies. In all there are more than 430 patterns as of this writing for you to choose from.

There are lots of variations on the seaside town with stacks of colorful little buildings along the water’s edge. I picked this one to share because it reminds me of a place I spent a summer a long time ago. Seaside Town is 200 by 200 stitches, which comes out to 14.25 by 14.25 inches, or 36.3 by 36.3 cm, if you use 14 count fabric. The pattern recommends working with an 18 inch piece of fabric to have a two-inch border on the sides, which makes framing that much easier. The description doesn’t say hoe many colors are used but it looks like a lot.

There’s also a whole section of cottagecore cross stitch patterns if that’s a style you’re into. Most of them are literally designs of cottages, but you’ll also find flowers, mushrooms, and even a design of a Victorian style bathtub.

As of this writing the designer offers volume discounts, with 30 percent off when you buy two patterns, 40 percent off when you buy three, and 50 percent off when you buy four at the same time. So if this is a vibe you like, visit their shop and stock up on patterns that will keep you busy (and chill with all those cool colors!) for a long time to come.

[Photo: TAM Stitch Designs]

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Cross Stitch Patterns Inspired by the Beach

When you put all the time and energy you do into making a great cross stitch project, it’s worth taking the time to frame it in a way that will make it look its best.

Often for smaller designs we’ll choose to frame projects in a hoop, which is cute and a fine option, especially for seasonal projects you might want to change out through the year. Others will send their finished projects for professional framing, which is a great option for gifts and heirloom items that need to be preserved, but it can also be quite expensive.

Crewel Ghoul has a great tutorial for a way that you can easily frame your cross stitch projects at home with just a few supplies.

She uses adhesive mounting board (but you can use non-adhesive board if you have some one hand or you need a size that’s not available in an adhesive version) and a few other basic supplies to secure the sides and corners of the cross stitch fabric around the board before putting the design in the frame.

This requires a bit of hand sewing, but we’re cross stitchers so I’m sure we can handle that.

Framing your cross stitch like this gives it a little padding in the frame, which makes it look better than if it were just flat in a frame with no special finishing. It’s also a great idea to use a frame without glass or to leave the glass out of the frame so it doesn’t crush your stitches.

And though this is super secure it’s not 100 percent permanent if you decide you don’t want the project framed in that way any more. Or you can take it out of the frame and the edges are still all nicely finished so you can display it a different way without having to do anything else to it.

Check out the tutorial at Crewel Ghoul.

[Photo: Crewel Ghoul.]

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