Flutter By : 1

And so a new series of free designs gets under way – six butterflies, with a hint of summer in the colourway.


I love the vibrancy of cerise mixed with orange, and whipping green chain with snow white creates a candy-striped outline to the wings. If you're going with your own colour scheme, use any two contrasting colours for the whipped chain to create the desired effect. And stem stitched clockwise gives a smoother line.

Download the pattern for Flutter By 1 from the free patterns section of my website. And go to the useful links page for stitch books and online stitch libraries.

Update: I originally wrote to stitch stem anti-clockwise, but French 75's comment made me realise my mistake. Sorry about that.

The return of the Jacobean Leaves

Now that issue 67 of Inspirations magazine has come and gone, I’ve been able to put my Jacobean Leaves embroidery patterns back on my website.


You can find them once more in the free patterns section. Just click on the images to download the PDFs for the patterns you’re after.

Celtic Leaves

This project took a bit of a back seat after I posted two sneak peaks of it towards the end of last year. But some time off over the festive season allowed me to finish off the embroidery and draw up the pattern.

I’m quite chuffed with the way it’s turned out. Each leaf is completely different, which made for interesting stitching. The stem took a bit of working, as I went with a variegated perlé thread and had to work it in such a way that all the darker bits ended up on the central stem to create the effect I was after. But it was well worth the effort, as it turned out even better than I’d hoped.


It’s a partner project for Celtic Stems in what could easily become a signature style. It’s a fun project to stitch and doesn’t take that long to complete. The pattern’s available now on kellyfletcher.co.uk if you’d like to give it a go.

New year, new projects

Happy new year, everyone. Hope you all enjoyed the holidays and are raring to get stitching again, because I’ve got a new pattern coming out soon that I think you're going to like. I just need a smidgen of sun so I can photograph it…

I plan to load the first in my new series of free designs – Flutter By – on to my website by the end of the month. It’s a range of six and there'll be a new one each month for the next while. And now that that's down in black and white, I'd better get stitching!

I finished off a bunch of projects at the end of last year, cleared my sewing table so to speak. I'm looking forward to getting going on some new ideas now, the first of which are for issue 03 of the Stitch and Thimble. This'll be out in March, so look out for it.

Other than that, I wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous year filled with hours of stitching.