Kana Samplers and Stitched Kanji

Hiragana sampler from “Manga Cross-Stitch”

Small banner with numbers from “Manga Cross-Stitch

Monogram in two sizes from “Manga Cross-Stitch”

Kanji for ‘river’ from “Manga Cross-Stitch”

Katakana sampler – an image from “Manga Cross-Stitch”

Graphic styles in Japanese type from “Manga Cross-Stitch”

Kanji for ‘fire’ from “Manga Cross-Stitch”

The US edition of “Manga Cross-Stitch”

These were created for Manga Cross-Stitch.

I wanted to put in some more traditional designs, and realised that I’d never seen any samplers for the katakana and hiragana syllabaries. They work as a pair or alone, look good on linen or Aida, and switching colour schemes to fit your own decor is easy.

I also made some individual kanji images and a long sampler with a few smaller kanji-inspired items that could be finished as pictures, cushions, banners, bell-pulls or borders.

When designing or stitching any non-Roman script it’s important to understand and observe its rules. For example, Japanese script has a specific order in which the strokes of each character are written and cross each other. This can change the meaning. So when deciding which parts of the character are fatter or thinner, or which outlines cross each other, you need to look at good research sources to make sure that what you stitch means what you want it to mean.

Luckily there are some excellent language-learning sites on the internet which can show you how to write almost anything. There are also a number of sources for free-to-use downloadable fonts which you can copy and paste into MacStitch (or whatever stitch design programme you use) as a basis for your work.

Go and have some fun with Japanese letters!