Atypical Needlework

Posted by Cyn

I’ve been doing counted-​​thread needle­work for about thirty years, and at times I’ve been ter­ri­bly frus­trated with the fact that I seem to see vari­a­tions on the same themes over and over again: teddy bears, coun­try scenes, Chris­t­ian verses and kitschy crap. I sel­dom stitch a design, even for some­one else, unless I truly like it. I don’t like much of the above. (When I make an excep­tion, it’s for love, noth­ing less.)

There are, thank­fully, far more diverse pat­terns avail­able now than when I started stitch­ing in the early 80s. It can still be hard to find some kinds of designs. In fact, if you’re look­ing for any­thing designed for those of us whose faith is any­thing but Chris­t­ian, you’re just out of luck in most needle­work shops. I’ve yet to see fem­i­nist designs, or any­thing for those of us with fairly lib­eral pol­i­tics, or any­thing related to gay/​lesbian pride. I’ve designed a few pat­terns now, but I also like to col­lect the sites I’ve found that do have unusual designs, and maybe make it just a lit­tle eas­ier to find them. After see­ing some­one come into rec.crafts.textile.needlework at least once a month to ask about pagan and/​or Celtic designs, I fig­ured putting them on a web site would be eas­ier than typ­ing the info in every month.

The fact that I’ve listed a site here does not con­sti­tute an endorse­ment of the designs on it. Some of them are, by my stan­dards, down­right ugly. Oth­ers just aren’t to my tastes, but they are top­i­cally atyp­i­cal. If you know of a site I’ve missed, please let me know! I specif­i­cally haven’t included fan­tasy pieces, because Lady Jylythe has already done a mar­velous job of list­ing those.

This page has got­ten rather unwieldy, so I’ve finally been forced to split things up a lit­tle. The Celtic and pagan designs have their own pages now — the oth­ers are listed here.

  • Stitchin’ Chicken designed her Élite Nin­tendo Sam­pler (click on “Pat­terns” on her site) using screens from her favorite old video games. (added 7−2−05)

  • Sam and Genevieve met Gwyn and Larkyn, of The Fam­ily Jew­els Designs, at the Pride Fes­ti­val in Atlanta. I’m very sorry I didn’t get to meet them, and see their lovely wed­ding sam­plers in per­son! What’s atyp­i­cal about these is that the cou­ple in the sam­pler can be same or oppo­site sex. The women can be wear­ing pants or dresses (no dresses for the guys, I sup­pose!), and the hair and skin tones are cus­tomiz­able. I love it! (added 6−25−05)

  • I’m drool­ing over quite a few of Châte­laine Designs’ pieces.

  • Islamic designs, includ­ing verses from Al-​​Quran. Some free pat­terns are avail­able on the site.

  • JJM Designs has some mar­velous space-​​themed pieces in the Sci­ence sec­tion of their site, as well as some lovely man­dalas.
  • Hill­croft House has twenty dif­fer­ent Celtic knot pat­terns avail­able, accord­ing to their web site, as well as astro­log­i­cal designs.
  • Her­itage Stitch­craft offers a design for each of the Greek Zodiac signs.
  • Jeanette Ardern Designs has a few Celtic pieces, some really cool geo­met­ric pieces and a lovely sun and moon set.
  • The col­lec­tion at Lat­tuca Orig­i­nal Cross Stitch Designs includes sev­eral Egypt­ian designs.

Permalink | June 17th, 2012

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