Here’s a little free hand embroidery pattern for you – one that has loads of possibilities when it comes to embroidery techniques!

This is an adaptation of an element within a much larger project featured in the old Herrschner’s catalog from the beginning of the 1900’s. If you’ve never seen that catalog, you can find it online in various places. Antique Pattern Library has it available under H, and you can also search Flickr (using “Herrschner 1907”) and many images from it will come up.

But… all that having been said…. if you can find your own real copy of it from used or rare booksellers, it’s a wonderful resource to have! It’s so enjoyable to browse through.

Imagine how much fun it must have been for embroiderers at the turn of the 20th century to find out a new catalog was out, to wait with anticipation to see it, and finally to linger over the pages making purchasing decisions!

I found my copy foraging through a library book sale years ago, and picked it up for a whole fifty cents. One of those serendipitous moments…