Cross-Stitch

Charts, patterns and everything needlepoint

Seasonal Cross Stitch with a Primitive Spin

by

This week’s designed spotlight is on Twin Peak Primitives, the design home for a duo of twin sisters from the Netherlands. Their work covers a lot of different subjects, including holidays, American patriotic designs, sampler-style stitches and more.

Since I’m writing this before Halloween, I wanted to point out in particular their Halloween designs. (Links here are Etsy links, but you can also buy direct from their website if you’re in Europe.)

They recently released a new Gothic Halloween collection for 2023 that includes nine different Halloween patterns, all worked in black. There are mini samplers, a biscornu, a triangular design and some small ornaments. The designs include a sampler with the alphabet and skulls, a Gothic crow, a threatening bee, the witches of Salem, a creepy wedding ceremony, another alphabet design with a witch on a broom and pumpkins, a pumpkin with skulls on its surface, a larger skull design and the biscornu, which has a geometric design.

There’s also a haunted chateau design that features a spooky looking house surrounded by crows, nights, and other details, along with an alphabet, the word Halloween and the year. In all they have 31 Halloween designs, which you can find here. A couple more of my favorites are the bus going to Salem and Silent Phantoms of the Night, but be sure to scroll through if you’re looking for new designs for the season.

In addition to the Halloween designs there are lots of American themed patriotic designs and pastoral scenes, winter and Christmas designs, and lots of mini collections with small patterns on a theme, like gingerbread, St. Patrick’s Day and holiday ornaments.

On their website they also have a nice collection of freebie patterns, most of which have a holiday theme. You’ll find some cute fall and Halloween designs there as well.

[Photo: Twin Peak Primitives]

Have you read?

How to Add Text to a Cross Stitch Project

One of the easiest ways to make a cross stitch project more personal is to add text to it. Whether you’re adding the names of people getting married to a generic floral cross stitch design, birth information to a project on theme with the new baby’s room or just adding a word or phrase that’s meaningful to you, adding words to cross stitch projects make them that much more special. 

But if you’re not working with a project that already has text built in, or you want to change the text that’s there, that can feel a little daunting. 

Caterpillar Cross Stitch has a great guide to adding names and words (as well as numbers) to projects, which talks you through what to consider and how to actually go about adding text to a cross stitch project successfully. 

You’ll need to think about what kind of font you want to use and if you’re using back stitched letters or larger filled letters, how much space you need and how the letters work together in the text you’re planning to make sure it’s readable. 

Their post includes common pitfalls such as running out a space or ending up with text that’s off center and how to avoid them (spoiler: chart out your text before you stitch!). 

The whole post is really helpful if you’ve never added lettering to a project before and don’t know where to start. I like to use block letters in back stitch when learning how to add text to cross stitch, but of course there are tons of lettering options. Check out this collection of cross stitch fonts if you want to see some different things you can try. 

And head over to Caterpillar Cross Stitch to get more tips for how to successfully add lettering to your cross stitch projects. They also have their own alphabet and number charts you can buy to add text to your stitching. 

Have you ever added text to a cross stitch project? I’d love to hear how it went!

[Photo: Caterpillar Cross Stitch]