Designer Spotlight: Wonder Stitch UA

Wonder Stitch UA is more than just a shop that sells cross stitch patterns. They also sell hoops, organizers and accessories for your projects, as well as individual patterns.

The biggest section of patterns in the shop is holiday, which includes Halloween and Christmas. I also saw a few other holidays like St. Patrick’s Day and Mother’s Day, as well as some designs that I would just call seasonal.

For example there’s a series of these little forest spirit designs; this one is for fall. The pattern describes it as a kind of “forest fairy animal.” Its eyes are slightly unsettling, but I like the rest of it. The design is 85 by 88 stitches, and the notes don’t indicate how many colors are used but it looks like a fair number.

Moving on from holidays, you’ll also find a lot of floral cross stitch designs, which are mostly realistic renderings of different kinds of flowers; and animal patterns, heavy on watercolors, cutesy designs and a few more realistic patterns, too.

Another big category is the full coverage designs (meaning that the whole fabric is covered with stitching rather than having some white space). This section covers a wide variety of patterns, from still lifes to animals, landscapes and holiday scenes. There are a lot of cats.

Because the shop is based in Ukraine I need to point out their Ukrainian patterns, which include folk designs, flowers, the Ukraine coat of arms and more.

In addition there are landscapes, nautical patterns, gnomes, birds and insects, houses and people.

Beyond all that there’s a bunch of fun products for cross stitching. The kits section includes lots of great blanks you can use for cross stitching, from key ring blanks to bracelets and passport covers (there are also some cute thread organizers). They have an array of magnetic hoops that can be used to frame cross stitch, project bags and organizers to drape over your chair and more.

And because these are the times we live in, there’s even a section of products that are already in the United States so we can support them and save on shipping costs at the same time.

Head to Wonder Stitch UA to see all the fun stuff and patterns they have available.

[Photo: Wonder Stitch UA]

The cross stitcher behind the blog Sirious Stitches is quite into biscornu.

If you’re not, a quick primer: biscornu are three-dimensional cross-stitched objects with eight points, often with an indention in the middle that makes them look a bit like doughnuts without the hole. They can be just about any size and subject you can think of. They’re often used as pincushions but can also be seasonal decor or just decoration for any time of year.

I’ve got a collection of biscornu cross stitch patterns here.

Once you’ve stitched one or several (they are a little addicting) you might wonder what you can add to them to make them even more extra.

It very much depends on the design of your biscornu and the look you are going for, but Sirious Stitches has a great post all about some of the options you might consider.

I don’t want to give you the whole list because you need to go visit and see all of their great biscornu they’ve stitched, but one really easy thing that you can do with a lot of designs is take advantage of that center indent by adding a button, beads, silk flower or another embellishment.

This is great to do just with a basic button from your stash that coordinates with the design and colors of the cross stitching, but it’s extra fun if you have a button that’s on theme, such as a leaf for a fall biscornu or a flower shaped button for a floral design. Add a jingle bell to a Christmas pattern, or a charm if you don’t have a button that coordinates.

Just this one idea is sure to get you thinking about ways to embellish biscornu (not to mention other cross stitch projects) but head over to Sirious Stitches to see all of their ideas for embellishing biscornu to make these already fun projects even more fun.

Have you ever made biscornu? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Sirious Stitches]

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