Designer Spotlight: Tinsel Cross Stitch

July 14, 2024 by Sarah White

With a name like Tinsel Cross Stitch, you might expect a lot of Christmas themed cross stitch patterns, and you will definitely find them. But there’s a lot of other interesting stuff in this Polish designer’s Etsy shop.

But since we’re starting there, let’s get into the Christmas designs. There are more than 100 Christmas scenes as I write this, ranging from traditional to cute, with trees, snowflakes, birds and more. In addition to those you’ll find Christmas ornaments, which are a combination of designs that could be turned into ornaments as well as larger designs that include ornament motifs. There are also Christmas stocking patterns, with a range of motifs and often including an alphabet so a name can be added.

For example there’s this red truck and presents stocking with an alphabet in upper and lower case for stitching a name at the top. The design is 144 by 295 stitches, which makes it just over 21 inches tall and 10.3 inches wide (that’s 53.5 by 26.1 centimeters for our metric friends) on 14 count fabric. It uses 26 colors and includes full cross stitches, half stitches, French knots and back stitching.

But I said Christmas isn’t all there is so what else can you find? There are patterns for Halloween, Easter and Valentine’s Day, as well as patterns for different seasons. There are lots of gorgeous tree of life designs. Patterns of birds, nature and flowers. All sorts of alphabets, sold as sets or individual letters if you just need a few for a monogram.

And samplers of all sorts, for a collection of keys to patterns that look like tiles and those that include Medieval motifs. So there really may be something for everyone here. Make sure you check out this diamond Quaker design; it’s one of my favorites.

Check out all the patterns they have to offer at Tinsel Cross Stitch.

[Photo: Tinsel Cross Stitch]

Have you read?

How to Add Text to a Cross Stitch Project

One of the easiest ways to make a cross stitch project more personal is to add text to it. Whether you’re adding the names of people getting married to a generic floral cross stitch design, birth information to a project on theme with the new baby’s room or just adding a word or phrase that’s meaningful to you, adding words to cross stitch projects make them that much more special.

But if you’re not working with a project that already has text built in, or you want to change the text that’s there, that can feel a little daunting.

Caterpillar Cross Stitch has a great guide to adding names and words (as well as numbers) to projects, which talks you through what to consider and how to actually go about adding text to a cross stitch project successfully.

You’ll need to think about what kind of font you want to use and if you’re using back stitched letters or larger filled letters, how much space you need and how the letters work together in the text you’re planning to make sure it’s readable.

Their post includes common pitfalls such as running out a space or ending up with text that’s off center and how to avoid them (spoiler: chart out your text before you stitch!).

The whole post is really helpful if you’ve never added lettering to a project before and don’t know where to start. I like to use block letters in back stitch when learning how to add text to cross stitch, but of course there are tons of lettering options. Check out this collection of cross stitch fonts if you want to see some different things you can try.

And head over to Caterpillar Cross Stitch to get more tips for how to successfully add lettering to your cross stitch projects. They also have their own alphabet and number charts you can buy to add text to your stitching.

Have you ever added text to a cross stitch project? I’d love to hear how it went!

[Photo: Caterpillar Cross Stitch]