I keep picking cross stitch designers to feature at random from a list that I found online a while ago (with a few Etsy shops that I like thrown in) and it seems like most of them make lots of sampler cross stitch patterns.
This is really interesting to me because I’ve never stitched a sampler and I don’t think I would ever want to, but I guess a lot of people must be or there wouldn’t be so many people selling samplers, right? If you stitch samplers, by the way, I’d love to hear about it!
Samplers of all sorts of styles are on offer from this week’s featured designer, Long Dog Sampler. They have organized their patterns in the following categories:
- traditional
- Dutch
- Quaker
- geometric
- monochromatic
- generic
- band
I do not know what all the differences are, through traditional looks to be traditional British styles. I don’t know where the classification “generic” comes from or why any of these would be labeled that. There are a lot of patterns featuring animals, and the thumbnail photo for the category is Opus Magnusson, shown above, which certainly doesn’t look like anything I would call generic. (It says it is inspired by Celtic and Icelandic traditions, so maybe generic just means it doesn’t fall into one of those other categories?)
If smaller projects are more your speed, peruse the peccadilloes section, which features mostly monochromatic samplers and bands. The squares and bands respectively are all the same size, so you can stitch one individually or combine patterns to make a sampler all your own. They also have a handful of non-sampler patterns, including Santa Quill, a pattern where Santa is played by a crow, riding a sleigh pulled by rabbits. You truly need to see it to believe it (and to read the new rendition of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” included in the pattern description).
[Photo: Long Dog Sampler]
