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Review: The Ultimate Cross Stitch Pet Collection

July 6, 2024 by Sarah White

If you’re a fan of dogs, cats, rodents, birds, horses or barnyard animals kept as pets, you might want to work some cross stitch patterns to represent your favorites. The Ultimate Cross Stitch Pet Collection by Claire Crompton features tons of variations for different breeds and colors of animal companions, as well as ideas for using them on practical items and gifts.

The book opens with tips on using different colors to make the projects your own, as well as how to combine charts and lettering to make your own sampler style designs. Several alphabets are included as well as a few sayings you might like to include in your projects.

For the dogs, there is a page worth of designs for each of the 22 most popular breeds, as well as individual designs for 18 more breeds and a few cross breeds and puppies, too, so you can stitch up a pooch that looks just like yours. Some of the designs are just the dog standing, sitting or lying down, or just the animals’ face, but others show more action such as playing with a ball, sitting in a bag or catching a frisbee.

You’ll also find puppies getting into mischief and sayings like “dogs leave paw prints on your heart” as well as a bone alphabet and smaller motifs that can be used in borders.

The cat section is similar, although with fewer breeds represented (and no solid black cat; a complaint only a black cat owner would note). Cat “action” shots include chasing butterflies and lying on a blanket. You’ll find a cat alphabet where the letters incorporate cat shapes and feline-focused sentiments like “all I know I learned from my cat.” You’ll also find borders with mischievous cats and an alphabet that’s spotted like cat fur.

In addition to cats and dogs there are sections on small furry animal like mice, rats, ferrets, guinea pigs and rabbits; scales and feathers, including birds, fish and reptiles; and a chapter with horses and farm animals like pigs, sheep and chickens.

Basic techniques are explained as well as how to add the charts to homemade gifts such as making a drawstring bag and adding a cross stitch motif to the front, making your own greeting cards to mount cross stitch pictures on and making signs and wall hangings, to name a few. 

If you have ever wanted to immortalize your pets in cross stitch, this book will be a big help to finding the right colors and poses to bring your pets to life in stitching. These designs would also make great gifts for other pet lovers in your life.

About the book: 112 pages, paperback, more than 400 patterns. Published 2024 by David & Charles, suggested retail price $24.99.

Funny Dog Cross Stitch Patterns

All you need is love – Dog cross stitch pattern

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Have you read?

Go Back to Basics with Common Cross Stitch Terms

It’s back to school time where I live, which I always feel like is a great time to learn a new skill or take a deeper dive into something that you might not have learned a lot about before. 

Usually when we are learning new hobbies we only know what we know. We learn the terms that we encounter, the skills that come up in the projects that we want to make. It’s not that we don’t care about other basics or different approaches, we just learn what we need to know to make what we want to make. 

And that’s totally fine, but sometimes it’s a good idea to go back and review the basics or learn the things you might have missed the first time. 

In that spirit I share this post from Caterpillar Cross Stitch all about basic cross stitch terms that every stitcher ought to know. 

Did you know that the little bundle of thread you use for cross stitch is called a skein, for example? Or the difference between grid size and design area in a pattern? Or that working complete stitches one at a time is known as the English method? (I didn’t know that one! Apparently doing half of the stitch across the row and then coming back and finishing it is the Danish method. Who knew?)

There’s also a little bit about getting started with confidence that might be helpful at any skill level. 

So what I’m saying is, even if you feel like you know a lot about cross stitch already, head over to Caterpillar Cross Stitch and check out their list of terms and make sure you know them all. If nothing else you’ll feel a little smarter, either because you already knew them all or you learned something new!

And if you do learn something new, I’d love to hear about it.

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