As promised in yesterday’s article on chicken scratch (which garnered a lot of discussion!), here’s the second gingham lace or chicken scratch pattern for a little corner design.
This is what the pattern looks like when worked out:
The pattern has obvious repeats (the floral diamond motif), so it’s very easy to extend it in either direction as far as you want it to go.
For this design, I used the following materials:
100% Pima cotton 1/8″ gingham (found it through Farmhouse Fabrics – they have some very pretty colors. I found it on their site by searching “gingham” and then clicking “view all” for the selections, and about half way through, I stumbled on the 1/8″ gingham)
For threads, I used #20 coton a broder in white for the foundation double cross stitches, coton a broder #25 for the yellow and purple on the flowers (working the purple in 2 strands), and floche for the bright green leaves. The lacing around the white blocks is worked with #16 coton a broder.
Both coton a broder and floche can be found online through Lacis and through Vaune.
You can make substitutions with regular six stranded floss, or with #8 and #12 perle cotton, or with a combination of both.
I prefer working the foundation stitches in a non-divisible thread like perle cotton or coton a broder, because it’s easier to work the lacing stitches under them without catching strands of floss.
Chicken Scratch / Gingham Lace Printable Pattern
Here’s the handy-dandy PDF printable for the pattern. The design itself is in black and white, but the background is pink. If you want to conserve colored ink, just choose “black & white” in your printer settings before printing.
Chicken Scratch / Gingham Lace Pattern: Floral Corner #2 (PDF)
If you missed the first chicken scratch floral corner design, you can find it here.
Tomorrow, I’ll share a basic tutorial for chicken scratch for those of you who haven’t tried it yet, but would like to. It’s a simple, fun, and attractive way to decorate gingham for spring and summer projects, and an easy technique for beginners and beyond!
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Mary, Thank you so much for another wonderful Chicken Scratch pattern. I have a question….
are you going to make anything out of these beautiful designs?
Yes, I’m making a little table cloth / tea cloth for the center of a table. I wanted to have it finished by Easter, but I don’t think that’s going to happen! -MC
Dear Mary
Another lovely Chicken Scratch corner design, so Springy, it looks an easy pattern to follow and this would look lovely as a decoration in a basket full of eggs. Thanks for PDF pattern and for taking the time to share this with us. I hope you have a great Easter. I’m re-organising my room and have just bought a cabinet of draws for all my embroidery stuff, so I will spend a lot of time setting this up.
Regards Anita Simmance
Ooooh, that is lovely! I have a round kitchen table, but I think it would look nice using this pattern. It would create a square space on the table, which would be completely different from what my family is accustomed. Or/and I could do a table runner with it. Imagine the matching napkins and placemats! OK Mary, now you have me off on a tangent!
Other than cross stitch, this looks like something that my grandkids would and could do. The pattern is good as is, but you can also break it down or straighten it out to use for other things. My question is, where do I find the HOW TO for the stitches (i.e. tutorial for each stitch used). I will need this for the girls so they can have something to look at when working on a project. Thanks for all your help.
Hi, Mary – tutorial coming tomorrow!
Dear Mary, thanks for the news of the tutorial. I am inspired by you but till now has not done any gingham.
I love this spring design. I have sewn chicken scratch once before a couple of years ago on a red/white gingham apron I won on ebay. It came with a 1964 paper magazine that had the pattern (which the magazine called snowflake embroidery). I loved how it turned out but have been wanting to try additional color work and this pattern you provided should be perfect!
I posted a photo of 4 gingham embroidered aprons in the Gallery Section of Ask & Share. Each depicts a country scene in a different season of the year and is only possible using a variety of thread colors. Mary, I LOVE the use of color in your design! The lovely details would not show up had they all been stitched in white, or the orange fabric color.
I have seen an example of Gingham Embroidery dating back to the 1870’s and my guess is that it began long before that when checked fabric made its debut and some creative lady decided to explore and embellish those checks with thread. It grew and evolved over the centuries from there, and who knows how it will develop as creative needleworkers use all the wonderful threads and beads, etc. to enhance humble gingham!
I really like this one, and as I looked at the stitching diagram, I thought to myself that it reminded me of a blackwork design. Talk about cross-over. :0)
Grammy once again loves it! Strangely she mentioned that she was never exposed to this kind of embroidery, and that she’d never even thought of it. But she thinks it’s just fantastic, and I’m commenting for her.
Hello. I’m trying my hand at chicken scratch and would like to download this pattern (gingham lace corner #2) but the pdf is not loading. Any thoughts?
Thanks.
Hi, Jill – the link works on this end. I’ve tried it in a couple browsers and it seems to be fine. If you’ve got a pop up blocker installed or something like that, it could have to do with your browser settings…?
Was wanting to print the PDF of the Chicken Scratch Gingham Lace Pattern Floral Corner #2, yet it came up unavailable so was just wanting to find out if it was just a problem or if it was deleted without it coming back to the site?
When I click on the PDF link, it’s coming up fine. You probably need to click on the link so that the PDF opens, save the PDF to your computer, and then open it and print it. But the file is linked properly and it comes up fine.