Designer Spotlight: Whoopicat

March 23, 2024 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

If you’re a fan of art nouveau, art deco or the arts and crafts period in design, have I got a treat for you today. Etsy seller Whoopicat is based in Michigan and makes glorious stitched reproductions of classic designs, as well as projects inspired by vintage illustrations.

Sometimes I don’t even know where to begin or what one photo to share with you when I’m writing these posts, and that’s definitely the case this time around. Historic botanical prints? Golden age illustrations? Reproductions of William Morris wallpaper designs? Early 1900s French fashion illustrations? There’s so much to like and make me wish my cross stitch skills were a little more than what they are so I would feel up to stitching any of these.

OK. How about this mandala cross stitch design based on a circular design of Christopher Dresser’s? He was an English designer in the late 1800s who was quite influential in the Aesthetic movement.

The design looks complex, but because it’s symmetrical it’s not as difficult as some of the others, and it only uses 10 colors. You can keep it in the tones of yellow, red and blue shown, or adjust it to suit your space better. (The whole idea of aestheticism is to make something beautiful, after all!) It measures 173 by 173 stitches, or 12.36 inches/31.4 cm square. It’s a great size for a pillow or a wall hanging.

If this sort of style appeals to you at all, you should definitely spend some time browsing around to find your favorites. (They have more than 700 designs as of this writing.)

And lest you think it’s all high art, there’s a fun collection of vintage and vintage-inspired holiday designs, too. I’m partial to this one developed from a postcard showing a bunch of black cats in front of a jack o’lantern.

Check out all their designs at Whoopicat on Etsy.

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Stitch Samplers and Other Historic Inspired Designs

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Christmas Ornament Cross Stitch Patterns

The other day I shared some cross stitch patterns with ornaments on them, so this time around I wanted to share cross stitch patterns that you can use as ornaments. It would be fun to do a whole tree in your craft room with cross stitch ornaments, or just add a few to your tree or give them as gifts.

These little quilt inspired cross stitch patterns from Flamingo Toes look like ornaments and fit in 3-inch hoops, which are perfect for hanging on the tree or using to decorate a gift. I love the pastel colors on these but you can use more traditional Christmas colors if you like.

This cute Christmas tree from Lagodargetoshop uses a single color and fits in a 4-inch hoop, but you could make it smaller if you wanted by trimming the last ornaments and gifts from the sides, or just stitch the tree without any other embellishments. Either way it’s a cute addition to your holiday tree.

Stitched Modern has a super cute collection of retro Christmas ornament cross stitch patterns from designer Gera. This is a printed pattern that will be shipped to you. Each pattern is about 40 by 56 stitches, or 2.9 by 4 inches/7.4 by 10 cm on 14 count fabric. To work the whole set you’ll need 20 colors of floss.

These snowflake ornaments from Our Little Handmade Home are each about 2.5 inches/6.4 cm when stitched on 14 count fabric, and they use a single color of floss. They are pretty in red but you could also do white on a blue or black background, or whatever suits your other Christmas tree decorations!

From the description it sounds like this set of vintage style cross stitch characters is presented as one large chart, but the photo from Sampler Antique Stitch shows each of them stitched up as their own little ornament, so it gets included here. You’ll find Santa and snowmen in different poses in this cute collection.

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