Designer Spotlight: Ulysses Blue Stitching

I have been holding onto this Etsy shop to share with you when we got a little closer to Christmas, because as of this writing 17 of the designer’s 39 cross stitch charts have a Christmas theme. I think we’re close enough, so here’s Ulysses Blue Stitching!

This Australia-based shop has a focus on sampler-style projects and, as I mentioned, there’s a lot of Christmas going on. There are several different advent calendar themed stitching projects, and I think my favorite is the one shown here. I love all these little holiday houses, and they’d be a great way to use some thread out of your stash to make all the houses different colors if you like.

As it was designed it uses 10 colors and has a stitch area of 209 by 209 stitches. That makes a finished project of 14.6 inches square, or 37.9 cm, when stitched on 14 count fabric, but the pattern includes options for higher count fabric if you want to make it a little smaller.

These advent projects would be a lot of fun to do as an advent project, so you have it finished for Christmas and to use as decor through the season in years to come.

In addition there are more projects involving houses, as well as a snowman and fox, Santa and a cardinal, and a super cute cake stand sampler that looks like a tree covered with ornaments.

If Christmas isn’t your thing, there are more traditional sampler patterns, several of which have an American/patriotic feel, as well as some Halloween patterns to work on for next year (there’s a Halloween advent calendar, too, which I love). There are also a handful of patterns with a bee theme if you’re into that.

Check out all the stitchy goodies at the Ulysses Blue Stitching Etsy shop!

[Photo: Ulysses Blue Stitching]

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]

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