Here's a free hand-embroidery pattern of a "sunflower cross." I wasn't sure what else to call it, as the pattern includes both a cross motif and a sunflower. I'll classify this as "church embroidery," although, as you can see by the design, it's a great embroidery pattern for anything at all!

This pattern comes from an old book I have of embroidery designs, published at the turn of last century and no longer in copyright. I scanned it and cleaned it up a bit so that you can have a good copy for your own embroidery library.

The pattern is open to all kinds of interpretation with stitches. You could go for a very simple look, outlining with basic stitches such as stem stitch or whipped backstitch. You could fill the leaf sections with seed stitch to give them some texture or color, like I did in this embroidered whitework piece. The center section of the sunflower is a perfect place to work a lattice filling.

You could also get fancy, and fill in the flower petals with padded satin stitch or even shaded long-and-short stitch.

Click on the pattern below to get a larger image. You can then right-click on the image to save it to your computer, and scale it up or down in a photo-editing program or on a copy machine.

Have fun with it!



For more free hand embroidery patterns from Needle'NThread, check out my Index of Hand Embroidery Patterns.

Labels: embroidery design, free embroidery patterns