About Little Dove Designs

Little Dove Designs started officially in 2007 but in my head it started way back when I was a child putting my first cross stitches into binca fabric at age 8. 

Being creative is definitely in my blood, I come from a family of creatives..........painters, dressmakers, graphic designers, fibre artists, master carvers, tattoo artists!

Art was always my most favourite subject at school, I was always creating something at home as a child. I took art to A Level but after leaving home at seventeen my change in circumstances meant I was unable to pursue my love of art any further at the time so aside from an Art A level I have no other formal artistic qualifications. 

I eventually managed to support myself through university opting for a business degree (less subjective than art) as I felt it would give me more career options at the time. Although I subsequently fell into a long career in financial services, creative pursuits always had my heart (although my business and finance background has proved very helpful in the long run!)

Cross stitch in particular really appealed to me from a early age, my childhood dream was to become a designer for the magazines that I used to buy. I'd spend my spare time dabbling in design, before the internet/computer world, using coloured pencils and graph paper and in 1999 I sent some of my designs to various magazine publishers only to be politely rejected. Here's a photo of one of my rejection letters that I still have all these years later!

 I didn't give up though and saved up to buy a really basic Cross Stitch design program in 2000, rented a PC and started to work harder on my portfolio of designs and turning them into charts others could work from too. The rise of the internet really helped me to start dabbling in selling my designs, first on Ebay, then on Etsy and then I launched my own website in around 2009.

I'd love to tell you a beautiful story about how the name Little Dove Designs came about but the truth is it just came out of a flash of inspiration and stuck!

After having our daughter in 2011 I decided to take a career break and see if I could make the business work full time. It was a huge risk, we made a lot of financial sacrifices and it was a challenging running the business around a baby, then a pre-schooler but as time went on I gained more customers, more interest in my work, managed to upgrade my design software and equipment and in 2016 I was contacted by the commissioning editor or Cross Stitcher magazine.................my  childhood dream had come true!

I spent almost a decade designing for Cross Stitcher before finally making the long overdue decision to end my relationship with them in 2025.

I also love yarn crafts too having built up a successful business, Little Dove Crochet, over the last 15 years, alongside my cross stitch designs. You can find Little Dove Crochet on socials and I've recently started a You Tube channel where I share tutorial and tips

For many years I ran the business from our dining room, eventually moving it into a spare bedroom and in 2021 we were finally able to buy a house which had space for an actual formal workroom!

Little Dove Designs hasn't been an overnight success, it's been a slow burn........just years of slow, steady organic growth and I'm really proud of that. I've quite literally built it from the bottom up singlehanded. I'm quite happy with it how it is going these days, I don't want to take over the world nor do I want employees and warehouses. I just want to continue producing original, authentic designs and share the benefits and my love of cross stitch (and crochet!) with as many people as possible

I'd love you to come and follow me on social media so that you can not only keep up to date with what I'm doing but share with me which Little Dove Design you are stitching... there is nothing better than seeing my designs come to life!

Thanks for visiting and thank you to all my customers near and far!

Faye x