Cross-Stitch

Charts, patterns and everything needlepoint

Stitch All Kinds of Samplers from Long Dog Sampler

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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]

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Have you read?

Do You Park Your Cross Stitch Thread? Try The Royal Roads Method

I have not done a lot of big cross stitch projects, but sometimes even with small projects it can be hard to decide exactly where to begin and how to work through the chart if you’re working with multiple colors. The general categories for the possible methods are known as cross country and parking. 

Cross country means that you’re working one color at a time, moving around the chart (or the section of the chart you’re working on) until you’re done with that color. Parking means you’re working in a smaller section and doing all the colors in that area, “parking” the threads by leaving them attached to the canvas but out of the way while you finish each section. 

Royal Rows is a specific way of parking named by Alison Royal, which is explored in detail on a post on Stitching Daily. 

The idea is that you’re working one “tower” of stitches at a time (she uses a section of 10 stitches across by 20 down, but you can do whatever makes sense to you). You work all the stitches of a color at a time, starting at the top left and working your way down. When you’re done with a color you can park it where needed in the section below your current tower (known as the dungeon) or in the “east tower,” which is the section to the right. 

There’s also a specific way of dealing with thread ends when you’re done with a color. This is a super simplified version (head to the blog post at Stitching Daily to get all the details) but the basic idea is that you’re working from left to right and top to bottom across the work, parking the threads in the next section when you’re done with them and systematically choosing which color to work with next. 

The whole idea of parking is kind of overwhelming to me though I will admit that it makes a lot of sense. I guess I need to try it on a smallish big project and see how it goes. Do you use the parking method of cross stitch? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo via Stitching Daily]