Review: The Ultimate Cross Stitch Pet Collection

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

I was recently approached by Alyssa, the cross stitcher behind the Etsy shop Stitchonomy, to take a look at her cross stitch pattern subscription club, known as The Pattern Club.

I took a look around and there’s a lot of cute stuff and fun options you’ll want to check out, especially if you love themed patterns that are small, easy to stitch and fun to combine.

The Pattern Club combines cross stitching with a social network. When you open the site you’ll see a news feed and have the ability to share updates much like you would on Facebook. You can see who is online, have buddies and post your own updates and photos. The community aspect is a little sparse right now but that should only grow.

The stitch along hub is the place to find the most recent patterns and information on the current stitchalong. As of this writing the Book Lover’s stitchalong was happening, with little designs like Peter Rabbit, a skull for Hamlet and keys for Jane Eyre as well as authors including Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen.

Other pattern collections include European designs, Halloween, ocean life, an allotment garden and more. Alyssa tells me there’s a new theme every month that either she picks or members in the community suggest. You can stitch just the patterns you want or put them together to make a larger collage.

The Stitchanomini vault gives you access to all of the previous patterns, and new patterns are released daily through the stitchalong. You can download individual patterns (most of them are 19 by 19 stitches) as PDFs or Pattern Keeper files. The PDFs include a color and black and white chart as well as a floss list.

Another cool thing you can do is build your own pattern collages from all of the squares that have been released. The collage configurator allows you to add patterns of your choosing to a grid ranging from 2×2 patterns up to 4×4. You can scroll through all the current patterns or search by theme and size to make a project that suits your needs. (Above is an example I made kind of at random but you get the idea.)

If you want to check it out, you can grab a three-day free trial and see all the pattern options. Membership is $7.99 a month, or if you pay for a year at a time you’ll get two months free. In addition to the patterns in the club, members receive discounts on patterns and supplies purchased through the shop within the club. Annual members get access to three paid/retired stitchalongs and lifetime members receive all retired patterns.

If you check it out I’d love to hear what you think!

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