Cross-Stitch

Charts, patterns and everything needlepoint

Practice Your Stitching with this Pretty Cross Stitch Bookmark

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I love cross-stitched bookmarks because they are usually pretty quick and easy projects that anyone can use.

Stitch up a bookmark and give a book or a gift card to your favorite book store the next time you need to give someone a gift and I am sure they will love it.

This pretty bookmark from Alita Designs only uses four colors, so it’s a great beginner project. The stitch area is 85 by 25 stitches and it’s worked on 14-count fabric.

You can get the free pattern from Alita Designs.

[Photo: Alita Designs.]

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Designer Spotlight: TesLime Cross Stitch

If your cross stitch tastes run to anime, fantasy, Disney, gnomes and the like, you’ll want to check out TesLime Cross Stitch on Etsy. This Dublin-based Etsy shop boasts more than 1,000 cross stitch patterns, with a strong pop culture bent.

The largest category in the shop is Disney, and there’s a separate Disney princess category, so there’s nearly 300 Disney themed cross stitch patterns in all. Some of these are chibis but a lot of them are pretty direct copies of Disney characters. Do with that what you will.

There’s also a large fantasy section that’s heavy on Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, dragons, aliens and trolls. In the hero section you’ll find Star Wars, Harley Quinn and the Joker, the Avatar, and Marvel characters. And in anime, there’s lots of Pokemon, Attack on Titan and Ghibli-inspired designs, to name a few.

The thing that caught my eye in this shop wasn’t any of that, though. It was sardines.

There are actually several different patterns in this shop of cans of sardines. I don’t really know why, but they’re just so weird and silly that’s what I had to share. In particular this one, where the little fish are wearing little shirts. Why? Again, I don’t know, but it’s kind of cute, right?

This design is 100 by 130 stitches and uses 21 colors. It comes out to 7.14 by 9.29 inches, or 18.14 by 23.59 cm, when stitched on 14 count fabric (the pattern includes measurements for some other counts, too, if you want to make it smaller).

And all of that barely scratches the surface. There are more than 100 Christmas cross stitch patterns (these are heavy on Disney, too). A steampunk raven. A large collection of gnomes.

I think you’re just going to have to go check it out for yourself and see what strikes you. If you end up buying one of their patterns, I’d love to hear what you chose! Check them out at www.etsy.com/shop/TesLimeArt on Etsy.

[Photo: TesLime Cross Stitch]