iStitch2 - cross stitch design software

Inspired by the samplers and the sampler cards by the Riverdrift House company I bought sometime ago and the works of my favourite cross stitch designer Karen Brittan (known for her Nordic designs and often featured in Cross Stitch Gold magazine) I thought I should try my hand at designing my own cross stitch patterns for cards and samplers. For that reason after some thinking and searching on the internet, I treated myself to a professional licensed cross stitch design software - iStitch2 - authored by the embroidery guru Jane Greenoff. It's the newest version of iStitch, released in November 2013 and it's full of features. 

The packet with the software arrived at my place last Monday. I found it on the stairs after coming back from work and I got really excited so I had to try out straight away :) I have no designing experience whatsoever and this is my first cross stitch design software so I will be building up my designing skills from scratch. There's plenty to discover and learn about this cross stitch program.

These are the features iStitch 2 offers:

It has also got all shade cards from all the leading stranded cotton producers to meet your stitching preferences. For the past few days I've been clicking and unclicking to make my first small designs :) It's great fun!

My first random cross stitch doodles look like this: just a collection of odd mini cross stitch designs. I have had a go at making tiny beach huts and attempted to create a folky reindeer that could be stitched on a Christmas card as a central motif.

Then I abandoned my doodling and started creating all sorts of borders and patterns for samplers. Lots of them to include the Scandinavian features. Cute, little and simple to stitch - this is my guideline.
The first half of the sampler strip looks like this:
(All the motifs below are 100% mine without any sort of influence.)

The second part of the design looks like this:
The ladybirds and the flowers right above them have been borrowed from the iStitch 2 motif library :) On the  right side you can see my "doodle" before I put a design into a sampler line :)

I'm really enjoying creating my own designs and altering those from the stitch library. I'm planning a set of my own sampler cards for Christmas! Fingers crossed there will be enough time not only to design but also to stitch them! 

Hope all of you are enjoying this nice long bank holiday weekend. Over here in North Wales the weather has been spoiling us today! I'm on my half term break so also hoping for some craftiness!