Designer Spotlight: Tourmaline Pattern

The Ukrainian Etsy shop Tourmaline Pattern is the place for you if you like animal patterns with a lot of whimsy and a touch of snark.

You know it’s going to be good when the categories include things like ghosts, silly goose, witchy cross stitch, mushrooms, snarky, gunny, cottagcore and goblincore.

Let’s go back to silly goose for a second just in case you’re wondering what that’s about. The goose can be found wearing a flower hat, carrying a Christmas present while wearing a scarf, posing scandalously in a watermelon patch and dressed up like a punk rocker, among other things.

I love a good mushroom pattern, but these are pretty silly, too. They include a racoon and a frog in mushroom hats, mushrooms feeling some different emotions and magic mushrooms being visited by ghosts.

Speaking of ghosts, there are ghosts dressed as cowboys, in flower crowns and taking selfies. There’s not a Halloween section outside of the ghosts, but there are also Easter, Valentine’s Day and Christmas themed cross stitch patterns, if you’re into that.

The snarky section includes some things I wouldn’t share here, but I couldn’t resist pulling out the Nessie cross stitch pattern that says “I don’t believe in humans.” This one looks great on black cross stitch fabric. The pattern is 54 by 43 stitches and uses nine colors. If you stitch it on 14 count fabric it will come out to 3.8 by 3 inches, or 9.7 by 7.8 cm.

In addition to all that, you’ll also find a collection of fun (and again, sometimes snarky) cross stitch bookmark patterns, which are great to stitch up as holiday gifts for the readers in your life. These include cats, the silly goose again, ghosts, snarky sayings, fruits, planets and more.

As of this writing you can buy any three patterns and get 40 percent off, or buy five patterns for 50 percent off, so if you like this style you can stock up.

Check out all their designs at Tourmaline Pattern on Etsy.

[Photo: Tourmaline Pattern]

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15 Ugly Christmas Holiday Sweaters To Cross Stitch

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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