Stitchable Cards

Above: moodboard for sweet tooth designs: images by Susan Bates, (apart from photograph of donuts: Elena Koycheva on Unsplash and ice cream on yellow background: Ian Dooley on Unsplash). This month’s pattern release celebrates all things sweet; candyfloss, ice creams, cakes and a slightly healthier strawberry are all included in this set of designs. For the colour palette I’ve chose a range of fairly soft pastel colours, with a pop of red to liven things up.     My first design is based on a vintage style cotton candy cart. I remember going to fêtes and fairgrounds when I was...

I wanted to create a set of summer themed designs for this pattern release, so I came up with a few different ideas and, after giving it more thought, a tropical vibe seemed to be a really fun way to go. Tropical designs are always popular – I think it’s because they’re bright and colourful - plus they create a bit of escapism for those of us living in less hot climates! They’re a popular trend in fashion and interior design and never seem to go out of style. So, once I’d got my theme worked out I start researching...

My inspiration For my latest set cross stitch patterns for ‘Stitchables’ I wanted to create some designs that were light and airy. I enjoy creating floral designs, but I like to mix things up a bit, so this time I’ve focused on birds and butterflies as my main subjects. The color palette I’ve chosen to work with is light and Spring-like. I’ve used soft pinks and peachy colors, with contrasting subtle blue shades – and a bit of lime green to liven things up a bit! The designs My favourite design in this set is the bird –which is a...

Above: My mood-board, showing a couple of my original cross stitch patterns, which were the inspiration for my new designs. Other images: top left and background image on right: Nature Uninterrupted Photogtaphy. Bottom right image: Annie Spratt. Lefthand side background image: Essentially Nomadic. A while ago I designed a set of cross stitch greetings cards and a couple of gift tags that featured little flowers in a variety of compositions. These patterns proved to be very popular and were some of my favourite designs - so much so that I wanted to create a new set of designs with this...

In this blog post I thought I’d write a bit more than usual about where I got my inspiration from and what kind of imagery I looked at before coming up with these new designs.  When thinking about putting together these new designs I realised that I rarely used the purple thread colours in the ‘stitchables’ range, so I chose to use this range of colours in these designs. Dark purple tulips are the theme for these designs. I have always loved their look, and they always come to mind when thinking of what makes a beautiful flower. Tulips represent...

Above designs and sketches by Susan Bates, apart from top left wintery landscape artwork by Lucy Grossmith and top centre, fox artwork by Mikki Butterley. Having previously created a couple of sets of stitchables Christmas designs in traditional bright reds and greens I wanted to move away from this colour palette and go with something much softer. So for the ‘all is calm’ designs I’ve incorporated icy blues, powder blues, minty greens and of course white for the snow. There are a few shades of brown in here too, and some rich reds and oranges, to add depth, detail  and...