Telling Stories Through the Needle's Eye: Let it Snow...With a Free Pattern

Thursday, December 16, 2021

Let it Snow...With a Free Pattern

It is hard to believe that Christmas is almost a week away! For me (Kara), once Thanksgiving is over, the time begins to go by at warp speed. In the state of Maryland and other places across the country, we have been experiencing very mild temperatures, so snow seems a bit far off. That being said, we thought it would be fun to re-post a free pattern that we originally offered five years ago. This project can be displayed not just for Christmas, but all through the winter.

We hope you enjoy stitching this little symbol of winter.

Technically, all "real" snowflakes are free, and sometimes we even have to pay someone to get rid of too many of those free snowflakes. However, today's free snowflake is a pattern! We wanted to give a little holiday gift to our readers, and given the season, we thought a snowflake was appropriate.

This lovely piece of silk, herringbone fabric has been sitting on my (Kara's) shelf waiting for the perfect project, and the creamy wool was a perfect complement to the neutral silk. Throw in some silk ribbon, bugle beads, Weeks hand-dyed pearl cotton, and some vintage buttons, and the project was ready to go. The seam binding was the right shade, but in the end, I decided not to use it.

First, I printed two copies of the pattern; one to look at and trace, and one to cut. Then I cut out the star portion of the pattern, sprayed a little temporary spray adhesive (505) on the back, and then traced my star onto the wool using a grey gel pen. This is the first time I had used spray adhesive on a pattern for a wool project, and I loved how it worked. Once it was traced, I cut out the wool star with some very pointy and sharp scissors to get the little star cutouts. The point of the scissors went right through the wool, making it very easy to get a clean cut.

Next, I stitched the star to the background using one strand of embroidery floss.

Press and Seal plastic wrap is one of my favorite tools for transferring a design onto wool. I placed a piece of Press and Seal over the uncut pattern, and using my white, roller-ball gel pen, I traced the snowflake portion of the design. Since the embroidery is mostly straight lines, you could probably eyeball it easily enough.

Using the pearl cotton, I stem-stitched the six, straight, snowflake arms that were on the wool. The bugle beads were used for the little, straight, lines off those arms. After that, I used the 4mm, cream silk ribbon to make fly stitches and straight stitches that completed the arms. The final touch was two buttons—one mother of pearl and the other a metal one that I scavenged off of a thrift store sweater.

The completed snowflake

As I was looking for threads and background for this project, I found another piece of silk in light blue that would give a "cooler" tone to my snowflake. I was looking for some sparkle, when I came across this glittery, variegated, thread in tones of blue.

Because the background was thin, I backed the fabric with a piece of flannel before I began to stitch. This also allowed me to stitch without using a hoop.

There were a few little puckers after the embroidery was done, but those went away with a little bit of steam from the iron on the back of the project.

I didn't have any buttons that would work but I did have quite a few Swarovski crystals left over from my Irish dance, dressmaking days. Voila! A sparkly, snowflake with a totally different look than the one in the neutral palette.