Cross Stitch Patterns

Since I will need to fill she shop up with my own patters, I have been drawing some designs that have started to cover all bases of big, small, hard, easy and so on.
Before I started this however, I was looking through books at other designs that have been done before, how they are laid out and what information is normally given with them.

In the book "Mini Cross Stitch" by Michael Powell, I found some very good information on what sort of stitch notes are normally written, all of his pieces have a stitch count, letting the customer know what size material they need to start on, along side this he always has a colour key, while patterns can be stitched from simply looking at the colours on the grid, this does not suit everyone and sometimes colours are very similar, because of this most cross stitch designers code each colour pixel and then add a chart at the bottom of the design, here is one of the charts out of Michael's book against the designs coded symbols.

Ed Hardy's book Love Kills Slowly Cross Stitch, also showed me a very similar style of charting colours, however this book did not show the colours and the code together as we can see above on the dairy. Instead this book shows you the finished article and the colour code then sets you off with a black and white image. 

Although this is a perfectly reasonably way to lay out your designs, I feel that looking at the two books I prefer the style of coloured images shown in Powell's. For this reason when I code my designs, I will leave the colour showing through.

Here are some of the designs that I have drawn up so far.

Some of the designs that I have drawn are full scenes that would be stitched and framed, these ones are naturally more complex than the single ones. These full images will be very large and time consuming pieces for an advanced stitcher who is looking for a new project. I have also done some medium sized patterns as you can see by the tree and dogs, these can be taken on as a small project or as a welcome challenge for someone new to cross stitch. The other designs that I have done are small singular designs that can be done by all abilities from beginner to expert, these designs are great to use on things such as birthday cards, but can also be added together to create a scene if wanted. These small fun designs will be cheap for customers to buy and quick enough that they will return for more.