January D.E.S.I.G.N. - Shannon Wasilieff Designs

Just in the nick of time, I'm squeaking by at the end of this month with my DESIGN post for January.  For those of you who don't know what that is, DESIGN is a monthly feature hosted by Leonore Winterer of the blog Needle, Pen & Sword.  The acronym stands for Designer Everybody Should Instantly Get to Notice, and each month, different participants post a series of questions about a favorite/new needlework designer they've been working on.

What designer do you want to talk about this month?

So who to feature for January?  Well, that was a bit of a challenge for me, because due to the Crazy January event, I don't have a lot of consistent progress on much of anything right now.  But after some contemplation, I decided to feature Shannon Wasilieff.  She's the designer of the Gingerbread Houses SAL from Facebook last year that I'm working on as part of my Turtle Trot projects for this year. 

Have you stitched a project by this designer before?

Yes, this is my first project by Shannon, but I don't think it will be the last. I actually found out about the SAL and Shannon's designs through a post she made on the CrossStitchForum.com website.  I had never seen any of her stuff before, but I do love her designs.

Would you buy/stitch a design by this designer again? Why/Why not?

Yes, I think I will. Her designs are so very cute, and they don't have a lot of fractionals (which always make me crazy).   In fact, I have a copy of 3 of her charts that were featured in World of Cross Stitching magazine, so I will probably do one of those next.  However, if I wasn't already doing a gingerbread house themed piece with the SAL pattern, I definitely would make this Gingerbread House Street design of hers my next project. 

What made you choose this particular design/designer?

As I mentioned, I found Shannon through the cross stitch forum I participate in, and that led me to her Facebook group, which lead me to the SAL. And I pretty much can't resist anything Gingerbread House themed. Hmmm... not sure why that is though.

Did you notice anything that distinguished this designer from others?

This is going to sound weird, but Shannon has a very "blocky" sense of shading. Not sure how else to describe it, but the way she creates the effect of shading by layering colors is very unique from what I've stitched before, and I like it. I like that it's not always just the next color down (DMC 605 to 604 or something like that) but she actually uses different and coordinating colors to make her shading stand out. Of course, she uses a lot of single stitches too, which drives me crazy a bit since I'm a bit of a neat back freak. But I can deal with the frustration of that because the outcome is so worth it.

So thank you Shannon for making so many wonderful designs!  You can follow Shannon on her blog or through her Facebook group.  She's got lots of designs coming up in the British cross stitch magazines soon, but you can also find her great patterns in her Etsy store too. 

Until next month!