Welcome to Heddle: a design-first cross-stitch pattern maker

For the start of my inaugural blog, I think the best thing to do is say welcome and give you a bit of background on why I created Heddle and what I’m trying to do with it.

It all started when I was seven months pregnant with my son. I was deep in the nesting phase of pregnancy, and what I wanted more than anything (in fact the only thing that would show I was going to be a good mother) was an Instagram-ready nursery. It was to be forest themed with art nouveau motifs and with a palette inspired by a particular Mucha poster.

To create this picture-perfect nursery, I needed a few things:

• Firstly, a quilt that I would make myself from a collection of art nouveau V&A fabrics that fitted the colour and nursery theme and had almost sold out online.
• Some bunting made from the same fabric.
• And a custom baby sampler, which would celebrate his birth, fit in with the theme and colour palette, and which I could make for him myself with my very limited cross-stitch skills.

I made the quilt. I cut out the triangles for the bunting (and they are still sitting in my attic), but I never got anywhere with the sampler. Mostly because by this point I had completely run out of steam. ...But also because I could never find a cross-stitch pattern that was exactly what I wanted.

Now my son is almost 10 months old, and I’m much more realistic about what makes a good mother. He needs lots of cuddles, lots of playing and lots of love. What he doesn’t need is a beautiful Mucha-inspired nursery. I do still want that sampler, though, to celebrate his arrival and to celebrate him. So I built a platform to design my own custom cross-stitch pattern, so I could get it just right.

I don’t claim to be a particularly good cross-stitcher, but I’ve worked in tech for over 10 years and I think I’m a pretty good developer. And I thought it was about time I built something for myself instead of for large corporations. So this is Heddle, a design-first cross-stitch pattern maker, built to make it easy to create your own custom patterns, whether you’re an experienced stitcher or a complete beginner.

It’s still very new and not battle-tested. There’s a lot I’d like to do with it as time goes on, but the most important thing right now is to send it out into the ether and see if other stitchers want to use it.

So this is it: I’m sending it out into the ether. Let me know what you think!