Susan Bates - Designing the “Home Sweet Home” Patterns for StitchableCards

Above: Moodboard for ‘Home Sweet Home' theme. All artwork and designs by Susan Bates.

As Dorothy in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ says, “there’s no place like home” - home is a place of comfort and safety where we can truly relax. So this set of designs, all based around the theme of the home, is intended to reflect a sense of happiness, calm and tranquility.

When designing I often start by thinking about all the types of imagery associated with the theme that I‘m working on. In this case, the theme of the home suggested images related to relaxing things that we might do at home, such as cooking, baking and gardening. I also thought of the pets that we might have at home. Pets bring a lot of love and happiness and are a source of comfort, so much so that we often think of them as a member of the family.

When thinking of the home I initially thought of those cute little houses that you see on antique sampler embroideries, so I thought it would be nice to include one in my set of designs. I depicted mine in soft shades of blue and pink and surrounded it with a pretty floral garland. The square-shaped card echoes the angles of the house and so I thought the house motif would work really well in this shape.

Baking is the subject for the rectangular-shaped card. What better way to enjoy being at home than to bake yourself some lovely homemade cakes? This design includes all the things needed to make a cake, plus some cute little cupcakes. The saying ‘home sweet home’ emphasizes the love we have for our home.

The heart symbolizes love, so I thought it would be perfect to design a pet animal for this shape, as we love our pets! I came up with lots of different cat and dog motifs, but this was the final one that I went for in the end. This little kitty has a cute blue bow around its neck and there’s a sprinkling of sweet little flowers in the background.

One of the ways that we can make our home more appealing is to add some plants; green is such a calming colour and the process of looking after pot plants is very nurturing. So for the final design in this theme I thought it would be really nice to include a pot plant – so I’ve gone for one with interesting shaped leaves in various shades of green, which are offset by the pink background. The card that the design has been stitched onto has been painted black, which gives it a strong contemporary feel.

The four designs, as you can see, are unified by a colour palette of minty greens, soft blues, pinks and primrose yellow. I hope you enjoy stitching these designs and coming up with your own ways of embellishing them to make them into greetings cards.