violets and butterflies. I like this layout as fabric.
Multi-purpose cross-stitch embroidery pattern for a vertical border, or overall design, with violets and butterflies. I like this layout as overall fabric. ___Printed at this scale, this can be used as a cross-stitch pattern chart for your own embroidery. It is set at about 12 stitches per inch. Cross-stitch is worked usually over 2 threads each way on even-weave fabric, or, at this scale or larger, it can be sewn on finer fabric directly over the printed stitches. Straight lines are worked in backstitch. Printed patterns for cross-stitch of that sort were available at least in the mid to late 1900s, often used for pillowcases. I do not recommend embroidering cross-stitch from the reverse - I have done it, and it was very hard to keep the geometry straight in my mind backwards!__At this size or smaller, this makes a cross-stitch look fabric, a cheater embroidery fabric. ___ I was doing the designs that are the basis for this set of fabrics in the 1980s and very early 1990s. Most of them have been hiding in my graph-paper notebooks ever since; a few I embroidered as counted-cross-stitch on even-weave fabric or Aida cloth.___My philosophy of cross-stitch design prefers to use the minimum number of stitches per motif to make the identity clear, and that flowers should be identifiable (sometimes to genus and species), even when drawn in pencil. No "it's a mass of amorphous purple, it must be violets".___ You will notice that this fewer-stitches-per-motif design philosophy means less work for the embroiderer too.