Crewel Embroidery
Most of the time when I think of crewel embroidery, I think of a colorful Jacobean design done in yarn. This Bird of Paradise is certainly colorful and has a bit of a Jacobean element to it, but the instructions state to use six strand floss instead of yarn.
This is a free leaflet from Coats & Clark’s I came across in a pile of needlework pattern odds and ends. The bird of paradise is beautiful and I would imagine could be used in many ways besides embroidery.
The numbers for J&P Coats floss used for this design have changed. Fortunately, the instructions list the colors along with the numbers. In addition, I was able to pull up an image of a Coats & Clark’s ONT Six Strand Floss, Art. C. 11 color chart with coordinating numbers.
The Crewel Bird of Paradise is done in turquoise blues, hunter’s green, tropic orange and shaded yellows. As always, you are free to experiment and use whatever colors you’d like.
Patterns to Trace
Originally a transfer, the scanned pattern will need tracing to use it. The images below are in .jpg format. When you save them, you’ll be able to change their size, etc. in photo editing software. I’ve also provided a .pdf format for you to download below. Usually you aren’t able to change a PDF file.
Below is a version to trace in the opposite direction or flipped. This way you can have two birds facing each other if you’d like.
Download Instructions: Right-Click on the image. Select either “save link as” or “save image as” depending on what browser you are using. Or simply click on it, it will open in a new window, you can right click it and save it from there.
Stitch Instructions
Next is an illustration of the stitches used is included. There are french knots, satin stitch, straight and long and short stitches. All of these appear in the PDF file too.
PDF File Download
Crewel Embroidered Bird of Paradise Pattern and Instructions
The pattern is in PDF format so to read it you’ll need the Adobe Reader software on your computer. Most computers come with it, but it is free and can be found here.
Download Instructions: Right-Click the link and select either “save target as” or “save link as” depending on what browser you are using or simply click on it and save or print.
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Enjoy!
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Hi I love bird of paradise am doing pattern 4 crewel class I was wandering if u had what stitches were used in original pattern it is veriy hard 2 work out in black and white I can guess are the tail feathers done in chain stitch and fly stitch in the pattern with colour placement the tail feathers dont look like the 1 above so am confused not hard sorry am going 2 do it in dmc thread so I can match names but not colour
I have a collection of vintage crewel & other sorts of hand-embroidery kits- does anyone else sometimes use a different color floss/yarn than what the pattern or kit calls for? I switched around some floss colors (that were in the original kit, to be used on another part of the same kit) in a floral design which I feel greatly improved the overall aesthetic.
I usually follow the colors in a kit. But with this one I might pick my own colors.