Stitch Designs with a Classic Look from Kathy Barrick

Today’s designer spotlight is on Kathy Barrick, a designer based in Maryland who gives a classic look to her projects.

When I opened her Etsy shop one of the first designs I saw was this one all about different words for blue, which I thought was funny because my daughter’s school lets the teachers teach whatever they want for the last two weeks of school and one of the teachers last year taught a class on the history of blue. Which seemed kind of weird to me but apparently there’s a lot to know about blue, and this particular project was inspired by a book written by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1814 all about blue.

In addition to that you’ll find alphabet samplers, old-fashioned birds, classic holiday themed projects and more.

Another one that caught my eye was this autumn themed pin drum, which is apparently just a different size and shape of pincushion (I got excited for a second thinking it was for knitting needle storage, since knitting needles used to be called pins). It uses five colors and measures 170 by 78 stitches and has a cute little velvet pumpkin on top, so it’s useful and decorative.

Since I’m writing and sharing this around Halloween I also can’t resist pointing out the Halloween birthday sampler, which would be fun to make for anyone born in October or who loves spooky season. It features a witch in a graveyard with cats and bats and it would be fun to stitch that part even without the words around it. Or make it just as it is even if you don’t know someone born on Halloween! It uses 14 colors (she used silk but there’s a DMC conversion as well) and measures 106 by 82 stitches.

Check out all of her pretty, classic designs at her shop on Etsy.

[Photo: Kathy Barrick]

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]

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