Stitch Up Something Seasonal with Little Stitch Girl

This week’s designer profile takes us to Little Stitch Girl, whose Etsy shop is full of cute designs centered on holidays and seasons.

Her shop includes 64 designs and they all fall into a seasonal category, including:

Spring
Summer
Autumn
Winter
Valentine’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day
Patriotic
Halloween
Christmas

Since I’m writing this right before spooky season, let’s take a look at those Halloween patterns. It’s actually the largest group of designs, and includes everything from a cross stitched candy corn worked with gingham and plaid designs to a whole series of buildings known as Spooky Hollow (the full set is shown above and linked here, but you can also buy the patterns individually). Dracula’s coffin shop might be my favorite, but they’re all pretty cute. The designs are more sweet than creepy so they’re great to stitch up if you like decorating for Halloween but don’t want to get too grim about it.

In addition the the Etsy shop, Little Stitch Girl has a website that includes a nice collection of embroidery tutorials to help you add finishing touches to your cross stitch projects. There are videos for things like French knots and lazy daisies as well as star stitches, herringbone stitch and more.

You’ll also find a collection of cross stitch freebie patterns on her website. There’s a cross stitch design in support of Ukraine, which should still be on our minds, and designs about winter, spring, the comforts of home and a border you can work on the above-mentioned Spooky Hollow design if you work them all one one piece of fabric arranged in a couple of different ways.

These designs are cute and look like fun to stitch. Definitely check out her Christmas patterns if you like plaid!

If you’re a designer or have a favorite designer you’d like me to feature, let me know by clicking suggest a DIY at the top of the page.

[Photo: Little Stitch Girl]

Next Pattern:

Funny St. Patrick's Day Cross Stitch Patterns

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]

Next Pattern:

Have you read?