A to Z Challenge: U is for Ursula Michael

Today is Day 21 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. If you are new to the blog and haven't heard of this challenge before, the basic idea is to blog (almost) every day in April, taking one day for each letter of the alphabet. Since I have a cross stitch blog, I am blogging about cross stitch patterns in my stash and on my wish list for this month of April.

U is for Ursula Michael

I know I've talked about Ursula Michael and her designs during the challenge before, so I'm going to try to keep this one shorter today.

Ursula is a designer with a huge array of designs.  She does everything from seasonal and inspirational to quilt patterns, to the excellent typography designs.  I have a few of these ones, a Christmas tree, and a spring one.  If you'd like to see some excellent progress on the seasonal ones, I suggest checking out Jeremiah's Mom's blog, since she's been working on them (and finished one so far).  I have several of these shaped word designs on my wish list, but I'm most excited about someday stitching this one that's shaped like an ice cream sundae called Let's Eat Dessert.  Yum.

And speaking of yum, this design called Dessert Makes Me Happy was what brought me to Ursula's designs in the first place.  I saw someone stitching this on one of the cross stitch forums I read and it was just so cute I had to find out more about the pattern.  That lead me to Imaginating, which is a company that distributes many of Ursula's designs (although not exclusively).  If you're a digital pattern person, you should visit Ursula's pages on Crosstitch.com, since many of her designs there are only available as download.  And she's fast!  She has been adding new designs every few weeks or so, it's crazy!

In additional the word designs, I love the shaped words she's done for several of the holidays.  Right now there's a Trick or Treat, Give Thanks, Happy Holidays, and this is the newest one, Happy Easter.  I've always loved art that has normal items shaped into letters (I blame this Disney logo from my childhood), and that combined with my love of holiday and seasonal patterns, makes these perfect.

And speaking of my love of seasonal patterns, Ursula also has a beautiful series of stained glass window patterns, one for each season.  I don't have room to show all 4 in this one post, but this is the spring one, which is one of my favorites.  Daffodils again.  

And now this post is starting to get longer, so I will wrap it up rather than risk waxing long. 

One of the other A to Z blogs I've been reading had the excellent idea of adding links to previous posts at the end of a particular day.  So if you'd like to see my previous A to Z entries:

A is for  Alphabet
B is for Britty Kitty
C is for Carousel
D is for Debbie Mumm
E is for Eat
F is for Frogs
G is for Garden Cat
H is for Hats 
I is for Ice
J is for Joan Elliott 
K is for Kokeshi 
L is for Lesley Teare
M is for Margaret Sherry 
N is for Noah's Ark
O is for Owls
P is for Pumpkins
Q is for Quaker
R is for Rules 
S is Sue Hillis
T is for Travel