D.E.S.I.G.N. February - Cloudsfactory

As it's 2AM here, it's technically March, but I'll just roll back the publication by a couple of hours, because it's still February on the West coast! hah

I am featuring Cloudsfactory this month, because I'm enjoying their 2015 Mystery so much, and they're fairly new to me.

I started seeing the adorable egg-shaped characters in some on the Facebook cross stitch groups I joined.    The first ones I noticed were the Harry Potter designs that people had stitched or were working their way through - particularly a really humungo pattern with most of the notable characters.

And then I saw some other cute ones - Star Wars, Sherlock, other pop culture and geek references, so I decided to check them out.

And they have a lot of adorable charts.   I know the little eggs aren't everyone's cup of tea, but they are cute, and I have already added the Star Trek series characters to my wish list (TOS and TNG will, of course! be first).  But even better, they have one of my favorite movies represented - Young Frankenstein!

There's definitely tons to like from a geek like me.   Final Fantasy!  Seriously, I think I spent a day on the site just adding things to my wish list  (Game of Thrones!  Smurfs!  Metallica!  Cthulhu! Babylon 5!   All the things! ) ;)

They do have more than just the sci-fi/fantasy geekery, there are pieces that represent different countries and cultures, sports teams, Disney princesses, scientists, just a ton of fun things.

Cloudsfactory produced a fantasy creatures calendar mystery for 2014, so towards the end of December I was seeing a few of those finished, and the fun, geeky pieces really appealed to me, even if they aren't something I would normally stitch.

I can see them making fun little gifts for people, and, well, they are just so damn cute.

I am SO looking forward to the next installment of the Zodiac sampler, which should be released tomorrow.   One more step closer to Aries, too!

So there's a fun "new to me" designer that I just discovered a few months ago.    I know these aren't everyone's cup of tea, but I love how whimsical and easy they are.   There are plenty of non-egg patterns, though these definitely make up the bulk of the catalog.  They're sweet  and even give me a chance to make gifts for people that won't cost me nearly the labor something major might, and I won't have to worry about spending 100 hours making something I don't like nor care about (especially for my all of my unfortunate Dr. Who fan friends - :P )

Edited to add - the legality of some of the designs, particularly tv/movie characters is pretty questionable.   I do really like the original designs, but I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable buying some of pieces based on pop culture characters which are someone's IP without knowing if the designer has permission.