It’s been a very long while since I’ve shared any free hand embroidery patterns here on Needle ‘n Thread! This design is from a series began last year, called Lilly’s Legacy, which you can read all about in the first article of the series (which also includes a free pattern).
Today’s design was a little difficult to render as a line drawing, as the image itself is quite crowded. But I love the original painted design, with its fiery color. I hope you like it, too!
I’m not sure what Lilly would have named each of her individual designs. And I’m certainly no genius when it comes to naming drawings! I always end up with titles that have words like thing and stuff in them. Thing & Stuff are not exactly evocative of artistic beauty of any kind, are they?
In this particular little painting, the tulips and the dots are what stand out to my eye, so I called it Tulips & Dots. Not quite Thing or Stuff, I suppose, but not too imaginative, either. If you can come up with a better name for this design, do feel free to call it that!
Then there’s the question of the actual design. Lilly packed a lot of detail into that little painting, but the detail didn’t translate well into the line drawing. To keep the line rendition clear, I whittled things down a bit to include the main details of the design, leaving the “filler” up to you. You can always use the original painting to give you ideas of where to add little accents of color.
I wonder if this design was ever intended for hand embroidery – my inclination is to say probably not. It strikes me as a pretty painting that can stand alone as a painting. It was obviously painted on a heavier, textured paper, which leads me to think that it was meant as a decorative piece on its own. Also, the design doesn’t strike me as translatable for embroidery, as easily as her other obviously-embroidery designs do.
The fiery little design was painted between two larger designs on the same page. The blue designs would be much easier to translate into needlework or appliqué, but in the scheme of the whole page, it was the bright reddish orange tulips that really caught my eye!
If you like this design, you might want to check out the other Hungarian embroidery patterns already published in this series, many of which are suitable not just for hand embroidery, but for other artistic purposes as well. You might also enjoy reading about Lilly’s Legacy, for the backstory on this series of embroidery patterns.
If you like the designs and end up translating any of them into some other artistic medium, I’d love to see photos!
Enjoy the pattern, and enjoy the day!
