Just in time for you to stitch up some winter holiday cheer for 2019 in the form of a dozen fantastic snowflakes, my newest e-book is ready for you today!
Snowflakes: 12 Winter Designs for Embroidery has been in the works for a long time, so I’m really happy to finally make it available! It was a gargantuan (but oh-so-fun) work, and I’ll tell you all about it below!
Snowflakes! has been my pet project for the last several months.
For a while, I’ve wanted to follow up my previous collection of 12 Trees for Christmas with a similar group of small Christmas or winter designs that would be fun to stitch and useful for spreading a bit of holiday cheer.
When I started doodling about with the snowflakes, I realized the snowflake offered an almost endless variety for interpretation in embroidery.
The twelve designs in my collection are offered with color, stitch, and materials guides, but really, they are meant more for personal interpretation. Go to your thread cabinet, dig through your stash, find your favorite threads, your favorite beads, your favorite trims, embellishments, fabric – and then go for it! Create your own unique snowflakes using the designs and tips in the e-book as a guide.
The samples I stitched for the e-book are all small – they are ornament size, at 3.5″ in diameter. But I’ve provided other sizes in the designs, as well – 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 5.5, and 6 inch designs, so that you can adapt the snowflakes to other embroider-able things, like table linens, Christmas stockings, quilts and blankets, banners and all kinds of other decorative items.
In the e-book, you’ll not only find five design sizes for each snowflake, but you’ll also find a materials list and stitch guide, stitch instructions, and step-by-step detailed finishing tips for making the ornaments featured in the e-book.
You’ll find tips on working with metallic threads and beads, too.
You’ll also find designs for embroidering (and dating, if you want) the backs of the ornaments, though I also talk about using regular fabric to finish the backs.
The Technical Side of Things
The e-book is a 103-page PDF. It is delivered to you immediately after purchasing via a link sent to your email address that you used to make the purchase.
For the best user experience with a PDF, I recommend installing Adobe’s reader on your computer. It’s free, and it’s the standard PDF reader that most people use. You can find it here, if you don’t already have a PDF reader. Many people already have it, but make sure you’ve updated it recently. Sometimes, if your software goes a long time with an update, things glitch.
When you receive the download link in the email, open it on your computer or laptop first, and download the file there, so that you can access it whenever you need it. Don’t try to repeatedly access the file through the download link – the link eventually expires for security reasons.
Once the PDF is on your computer, you handle just like you do any other file. You can move it to any mobile device or tablet that supports PDFs. You can print it on your home printer. You can also take a copy of it to a an office supply shop and have it printed (granted, this could be expensive, as the PDF is 103 pages). You can also opt just to print the pattern pages.
If you purchase the e-book and the email with the download link doesn’t show up, please check your spam filter. If it’s not there, drop me a line and I’ll help you out. You can contact me at mary(at)needlenthread(dot)com with any questions.
I hope you enjoy embroidering this collection of snowflakes as much as I have! I hope they bring you a sense of peace and calm, and a bit of winter sparkle and joy!
You can find Snowflakes: 12 Winter Designs for Hand Embroidery available right now in my shop!
Happy Stitching!
PS – If you have difficulties with the download or anything, just drop me a line at mary(at)needlenthread(dot)com! If I don’t get back to you immediately, please don’t fear – I will get back to you within the next 24 hours and probably sooner. There’s always a little flutter of activity when a new e-book comes out, so please be patient! Thanks!
Mary, they are lovely. I put them in the cart and can’t wait to get stitching!
One of the many tools that I have found useful is the laying tool. I have used it in the last 3 projects I have been working on and found it to be invaluable. It now travels along in my bag with needles and scissors.
Awesome. This answers all those questions about how to actually finish the ornaments…putting the back on etc. THANK YOU.
Dear Mary
I’ve just purchased the 12 snowflakes so very excited because they are lovely. Now to go and browse my book at 6.31am looking forward to browsing. Thank you for sharing this lovely book with us I hope many people sign up to it.
Regards Anita Simmance
Mary
I am absolutely delighted with the patterns and can’t wait for the school holidays to stitch along with my grand-daughter 🙂 Thank you for all the careful bookmarking which makes the designs so much easier to access
Cheers from downunder
Judy
I would embroider a very Brazilian Christmas theme. A toucan and various foliage of the Amazon. I think it would be very beautiful because this variety of colors is very tropical !!!!!
Right now I want to just sit and pet the colors and thread!!
I thought going in that I would want the colors for doing snow flakes and then I saw the rich browns and was building trees in my mind and then…… I saw the red!!! yep that is the way to go with hand stitching on a hand dyed fabric quilt of sunset and sunrise colors. Red Perle Cotton, Colour Complements Colour #187
#45 – Peacock Feathers and #188 – Autumn. A friend got me into wool applique last year. I am hooked!!
Mary! You’ve outdone yourself. This book is spectacular! The instructions are clear and readable; the layout is attractive and easy-to-follow; the patterns are clear (and divine!), the helpful hints are (no surprise!!) incredibly valuable, and the photos are drool-worthy. Your stitching will always be an example to strive for. I’m very pleased with this and hope you are proud-as-punch. To your readers: jump in! This is a wonderful book. Thank you, Mary, for sharing your talents.
Oh, Thank You so much, Cindy! That is praise indeed – and so appreciated! I’m glad you like the collection. I’m thinking it’s my favorite set so far!
I’m so pleased with this set – they’re just beautiful! Is there any chance we can get slightly more information about the linen you used? I’ve been unable to find any reference to Tailor’s Chalk linen on the site you listed, and I don’t know much about what weight or count of linen to be looking for otherwise.
Thanks!
These are so lovely! Truly, just looking at the photos, it makes the heart sing. They are a delight, and I’m sure that this is a little book that will become extremely popular 🙂
P.S If you need ideas for another themed set, I would absolutely love to see Celtic spirals and triskeles and so forth. A beautiful Gaelic theme for St Patrick’s perhaps? I bet that would be popular too 🙂
I really love your work. It is most definitely delicate yet strong at the same time. And your creativity is stunning!
I just browsed through the Snowflake book. Amazing! Thank you for such a thorough job. Over 100 pages of great photos and in depth instructions.
I wish everyone who writes instructions/patterns met your high standards. Well done Mary!
Sue
Busy stitching these fabulous designs for friends’ Christmas trees – hardest thing about them is choosing which one and then the colours. As something that can let down an ornament the notes and tips on finishing are great.
I just opened my download, and I am so impressed by the quality of this e-book. The designs are beautiful and well worth the cost by themselves, but the fact that they are presented in multiple sizes and with incredibly detailed notes–and even multiple colorways–is amazing. I am especially pleased with the meticulous instructions for finishing the ornaments as this is a part of the process that has confounded me when I’ve tried to make ornaments before. The clear instructions for stitches and beadwork are also much appreciated. And the photographs are delicious–my goodness, what perfect stitchwork! I really cannot speak highly enough of this book!
Hi Mary,
I’ve been looking through the snowflakes to decide which to stitch first and decided to go with the ones using the most obtainable threads, i.e. DMC. As far as I can tell from searches, unless I’m doing it wrong (always possible!), the DMC colour #3749 used on snowflake #8A does not exist. Would you mind double-checking, please? Thank you! I’m very excited to get started.
Hi did you receive an answer for this? I can’t find DMC 3749 either and am wondering if it is 3747 instead.
Yes, try the 3747 for the lightest blue.
I am very impressed with the instructions, photographs, stitch illustrations, tips, and photographs contained in this e-book. Initially I fretted over not finding all the suggested colors of beads and threads online, then I realized I need to use the book as a guide and choose what I like, as long as the sizes are appropriate.
Since this is my first experience with beaded embroidery, (or even buying beads!) I do have a couple questions:
1) Today I looked closely at each snowflake photo and counted each bead because I could not find a count for beads on each snowflake. Is that number anywhere in the book?
2) Is there a Facebook or forum group for this project?
Hi, Linda – You can order everything online, but to do so, you’d have to go to several different places, including some overseas shops for some of the metallics that aren’t available right now in the States. The idea is that you work from your stash, or from whatever strikes your fancy as you embroider. It is, like you said, a guide – I included the supplies I used, but I think very few folks would stitch these with the exact supplies I used. To answer your two questions: 1. In surface embroidery like this, stitches and beads aren’t counted. You use whatever you need to fill the design space. If you’re concerned about ordering “enough” of a bead, don’t worry about that. If you order beads, you’re going to get a package that has at least several hundred beads to several thousand, depending on the size package you order. From any bead place, the smaller packages (that range around $2.50-$4 depending on the shop and the type of bead) will be more than enough for all the snowflakes in this e-book several times over. There are lots of beads even in small packages. The exception would be Mill Hill packages, in which case a small package will still be adequate for many snowflakes. 2. No, I’m afraid there’s no FB group for this project specifically, but you can use my general FB group (Needle ‘n Thread Community – just search for it on FB). There are some folks in that group who are working on the snowflakes.
Where do I find the PDF to purchase? Thank you!
Hi, Janet – this PDF is available here, if you’re still looking: https://shop.needlenthread.com/product/snowflakes-for-hand-embroidery