I love free hand embroidery patterns and have been browsing the Internet archive and discovered An Embroidery Pattern Book by Mary Waring. This book is free to download and as the title suggests is full patterns.
Let me share some of the delightful patterns that I discovered in this book. I pounced on these as they would make great motifs for the holiday season. Of course when I saw this pattern I thought of Christmas trees and immediately thought they would be good motifs on a stocking, on small gift bags or they could be used as hand embroidered inserts on cards. Decorated with beads and sequins they would make fun projects for young stitchers too.
These motifs would lend themselves to being used as Christmas tree decorations or as little decorative elements in crazy quilting or on small needlework projects such as needle books or biscorno pin cushions.
The book opens with a section on borders which you can use on borders but also will give crazy quilters lots of ideas for seam decorations too! A section on pattern darning made me want to try some of them on my sampler as pattern darning is an ideal technique to fill an area.
I am always looking for ideas to interpret flowers so this set inspired a few fresh doodles.
Here are the bugs to go alongside them!
Add a few woodland creatures and then some birdlife and you have a whole scene.
As you can see many of these patterns are meant to be used as single motifs which make them ideal for embroidery on a crazy quilt project.
Readers who like retro stitching will love the patterns found in An Embroidery Pattern Book by Mary Waring. There are many treasures to be discovered in out of copyright resources. They do not have the modern photography and lush illustrations of modern books but often they hold charming patterns and good solid stitching tips that are not found in todays books.
All of the books on the Internet Archive are offered in various formats such as PDF, EPUB, Kindle, a text file, or as an html file which means you can read them online.
Have you seen my Stitchers Templates?
As someone who loves crazy quilting and embroidery, I designed these templates with other stitchers in mind. With my templates, you can create hundreds of different patterns to apply to your stitching and crazy quilting projects. They are easy to use, totally clear so you can position them easily and they are compact in your sewing box.
To see what they look like, find out about the free ebook of patterns that come with them visit the information pages.
Or go directly to the Pintangle shop to purchase them.
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Thank you for the book. I enjoy your site very much.
Appreciate your goodness. Creative and Generous in sharing it with others.
Love
Sonia
Thanks for the link. Enjoy your “break”. See you next year.
Hi Sharon,
Thanks for leading us to this treasure. I am need a few more lives though.
Chitra
Sharon I can’t make up my mind if you are Wonderful or Wik-ked. LOL The book is fantastic and I bookmarked it for slow reading – slow because it looks sooo interesting.
I’ve printed out the samples you have above and can see many uses for them.
Thanks a million.
p.s. What do you do in your spare time???
Hi Maureen – Spare time? Oh that stuff … well lately its pretty rare!
Hi
I actually bought this book on line about a year ago and it is delightful. I was hugely lucky to receive a copy with a hand stitched linen cover obviously done in the thirties when the book was new. Some of the writing is really amusing as she makes rather sarcastic comments about stitchers who only ever follow purchased patterns amd how they don’t get as much out of their work as those who design for themselves. The book aimed to get people using parts of these deisgns and putting them together in their own ways.
HI Gillian I noticed her comments but found it interesting that today peopel are so used to having patterns provided for them that they feel cant design their own!
What a find, Sharon. Thank you so much for sharing the Pattern Book with us . I love that 10th century alphabet – fabulous.
HI Andy I suppose 10 century is a bit more than retro?
What a treasure! Ideas are already popping like corn. Thank you for EVERYTHING.
Thanks for all the thank you notes – hope folks find it useful
What a delightful book. Thanks for sharing it.
Thanks Judy!
Thank you, Sharon, for telling us about The Embroidery Pattern Book. The trees, animals, bugs, and flowers are just what I need for my current project.
Thanks for posting the link to this book! Very timely for me with the variety of trees–and so much else.
Thanks a bunch. These look great.
Ooooh, Sharon. What a temptress you are 🙂 Thanks so much for these little ‘tasters’ from what is obviously a cornucopia of stitching ideas. Apologies for waxing so lyrical but it is 5.45 on a glorious summer morning in South Africa after a day of great rain; and it was such a joy to open your site to see all of this stuff.
I would also like to thank you for all the hard work that you put into giving us such super ideas and encouraging us to ‘step outside the box’ in our embroidery endeavours.
Hi Juno – thanks I am pleased to think they are tempting!
Thanks, Sharon, for this and all that you do.
Thanks Patsie hope you enjoy the book
Thank you, Sharon!!!