do it yourself

Intro

This web site gives you a wealth of beautiful and quite easy to make designs and all the support you need to get started. There are designs in the style of Assisi, Florentine embroidery designs, Celtic designs, designs for a large amount of black embroidery, many alphabets, a little bit about Miao embroidery, Chinese designs in the "voided" technique and intriguing mesh designs
There is sufficient support: You find users guides on the pages that are dedicated to the different embroidery styles. "Starting" is not too difficult because there are only basic stitches used in the embroidery designs: almost exclusively cross-stitch, double running stitch and flat stitch. Furthermore I pay a lot of attention to the origin and the history of the various styles.

How to use the drawings

On this site the design itself is also a working drawing or you will find a link to a page with the working drawing(s).
You can and you have my permission for saving these drawings on your computer and/or to print them.(of course only for own use). A general way for doing this is, while standing with the mouse pointer on the drawing, clicking right. In the menu that will appear, you find both opportunities: printing and saving. All designs are countable and nearly all are drawn to the same scale. To be more precise: the lattice is 100x70 squares and fits easily on an sheet of A4 paper. Printing them directly will give cross stitches about two and a half millimeter high. Big enough for reading the drawing clearly. Furthermore you can combine drawings, just by printing them out and doing some knit and glue work. You find even some grids on this site, for extra help
.If you encounter any problem, mail me and I will try to help you.

In many designs, especially those in the style of Assisi, one half of the design is the image of the other half. However, I almost always included both sides in the drawings. To embroider a mirror image is extremely difficult.
The situation is different for the so called plaiting patterns. There is no mirror line. But there are 90 degrees rotations . That means that only one quarter of the design is needed.By rotating your work or the design 90 degrees, you can continue working.

Brief comments on the various styles

Assisi

The collection of designs in this style on this site is by far the largest on the Internet and is also larger and of a higher level than any book that is currently available. Assisi is a form of voided embroidery work: not the motives, but the background is filled in with cross stitches ( there are also examples with long armed cross stitches). There are small, but also very large designs on this site. I have not, in every design filled in the background. That is not necessary, because it is always clear what the background is and what is not. Normally Assisi embroidery is made in two colors. The result, provided a good choice of the colors, the yarn and the fabric, is very impressive.

Chinese

Again, this is voided embroidery. Unlike traditional Chinese embroidery, made almost totally in flat (satin) stitch, the designs I made are in cross stitch and double running ( Holbein) stitch. I used traditional motifs, made them simpler and countable.

Black embroidery (Blackwork)

Designs in one color and made with one stitch: the double running stitch (Holbein stitch). Designs lend themselves very well for composing "samplers", but can also be used otherwise.

Plaiting work

You can regard this as a form of black embroidery. A design consists of one or several interwoven bars. They enclose small parts of the fabric. The bars are embroidered with the double running stitch. You can eventually fill in the bars or the small enclosed parts with a stitch of your choice. This could be for you a challenge. May lead to great results and a new style.

Florentine embroidery (Bargello)

This technique gives with just one and then even the simplest embroidery stitch, surprising and elegant results.

Miao

Just a start with some geometric cross stitch patterns of this minority group in China.

Alphabets

These cross stitch alphabets are unique and based on the fonts that you can find on your computer. It's possible to combine them with all patterns on this site and of course with your own patterns or patterns that you found elsewhere. There are also some alphabets, specifically designed for embroidery.

Celtic

Conversions in cross stitch of Celtic motifs, generated by a program I've written There are also patterns in cross-and double running stitch , which I designed based on Celtic designs.

With this web site you have a treasure of beautiful, original designs at your disposal. You will find nowhere on the internet a comparable collection of original, high quality designs, all free. But you can do something in return: if you make one of the embroideries, sent me an photograph in .jpg format of the result.