Designer Spotlight: Yellow Birdie Stitches

July 10, 2026 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

If you love to cross stitch bookmarks, Yellow Birdie Stitches is the Etsy shop for you. The shop is based in the UK and almost all of its designs are bookmarks (there are also some cute square designs).

You’ll find bookmarks about everything from romance novel tropes to Asian inspired towers, cats and Art Nouveau designs.

This one of a mermaid reading would be fun for summer, whether for you or for a mermaid loving person in your life. It measures 24 by 78 stitches and the patterns offer measurements for three different stitch counts, but it’s about 1.75 by 3.5 inches (or 4.4 by 8.8 cm) when stitched on 14 count fabric.

It’s shown here on white fabric but the pattern also recommends light green or blue if you have that in your stash. It calls for 14 colors (or 15 if you choose to use Light Effects thread for part of the project) and it looks like it’s all whole cross stitches with a fair bit of back stitching.

You’ll also need some felt or card stock to finish the back of your bookmark, though it is shown freshly stitched here.

In addition to the bookmarks you’ll also find some square designs that I think are designed to be coasters or mounted onto greeting cards, but of course you could frame them in a small square frame as well.

The cat section has several of these with a cats and bonsai theme. There’s also a coffee set that includes a bookmark, coaster and keychain fob. You’ll also find some seasonal designs.

In addition to the above mentioned categories, you’ll find bookmarks with birds, bugs and dragons; patterns for spring, summer, autumn, Easter, Halloween and Christmas; fantasy designs and projects for tea lovers.

So grab an audiobook and a project form Yellow Birdie Stitches to make for your next paper book read.

[Photo: Yellow Birdie Stitches]

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Everything You Need to Know about French Knots and Cross Stitch

I feel like I’ve written a lot about French knots, probably because they are one of those things that’s pretty common in cross stitch but also that give some stitchers problems. So let’s take another look at how to make French knots and why you might be having trouble.

This information comes from a great blog post from Caterpillar Cross Stitch, which notes that a lot of the success of your French knots depends on what you do before you actually make the knot.

It talks about what kinds of needles are best for making French knots (hint: not regular embroidery needles because the eye is bigger than the shaft of the needle, which makes it hard to get even tension), what other supplies you’ll need and how to cut your thread to make it easier.

It also covers how to actually go about making a French knot and some of the problems you might encounter along the way and how to fix them. This is things like your knots ending up on the back of your work, sizing issues, tension issues, having trouble pulling the thread through and more.

You’ll also find a discussion of the colonial knot as an alternative to the French knot (I’ve written about that one, too), which some stitchers find easier and it looks virtually the same as a French knot. And if you want to avoid knots altogether there are also some ideas for what to use instead.

Check out their post at Caterpillar Cross Stitch, and you’ll probably learn some things you didn’t know about French knots.

Pair it with my post at Our Daily Craft all about French knots, which is a little bit more about embroidery than cross stitch, but does have a handy chart showing knots of different twist numbers made with different numbers of thread, which I at least think is interesting.

[Photo: Caterpillar Cross Stitch]

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