8 Scandinavian Embroidery Patterns to Try

Bring a touch of Scandinavia to your stitching with these embroidery patterns inspired by rosemaling, Dala horses, and Nordic stars. The designs are easy to work withbasic embroidery stitchesand they're a great way to embellish your walls, clothes, or table with Scandinavian style.

The four floral motifs in this collection have elements that you might see in rosemaling, a decorative painting style that blends colors in single brushstrokes. While embroidery may not be able to accurately replicate the color blends, the leaves still incorporate this traditional folk art. You can use the floral designs separately or as part of a set of mini hoops or embroidered on napkins. There are alwayslots of ways to use embroidery!

The Dala horse and rooster are also reminiscent of the wood-carved pieces made in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries. These patterns provide a great place to use the most basic stitches, as they don't have any French knots. Finally, be sure to try the star and floral emblem, which would look charming embroidered on alternatingquilt blocks!

Supplies

To embroider these, you'll need todownload and print the embroidery pattern above(adjust the size using image-editing software), then gatherbasic embroidery supplies。To embroider the napkins as shown, you will need:

• Linen napkins
• Iron transfer pen, tracing paper, and an iron
• 4 to 6-inch embroidery hoop
• Embroidery floss in blue, light blue, yellow, red, and black
• Embroidery needle

Getting Ready to Stitch

First, transfer the embroidery pattern to the corner of the napkin. You can useany transfer method you want, but for this, we used a heat transfer pen. It's best to position the pattern (and therefore, the embroidery) so it isn't too close to the edge of the napkin.

Next, place the napkin in the embroidery hoop. Because the design is at the corner, the fabric may not fill the entire hoop, but that's okay! Just try to keep the fabric from stretching or looking distorted.

Stitches

As with many embroidery patterns, you can choose the stitches you like to use for this project. It can be as simple as outlining the motifs in stem stitch with a few extras. You can also use this as an opportunity to try stitching in a new way, perhaps by filling areas withchain stitchlike the example. Be sure to stitch the center lines first, then outline the area, and finally fill in with more chain stitch.

All of the dots should use French knots, but colonial knots work too. For the star and floral emblem, you can work pistil stitches for the lines with a dot at the end. To work this, come up through the fabric at the end of the line without the dot, then wrap the needle as you do for a French knot. Go down through the fabric where the dot is, then complete the knot. It makes a French knot with a tail!

For the grids at the centers of flowers, work them with back stitch, and to make any of the teardrop shapes, usedetached chain stitch。您还可以添加一个小箍ight stitch to the centers of the teardrops to fill them. After filling areas like the round flowers, try adding straight stitches right over the top of the stitching.

To form the wavy lines on the Dala horse and rooster, you can stitch a line of back stitch down the middle. Next, weave a contrasting color of thread back and forth through the stitches on each side to make the waves.

Follow this same process to embroider as many napkins as you want. You can make them all the same or mix them up with different designs!

After the embroidery is finished, you'll need to remove the creases from the embroidery hoop. Mist the fabric with water and let it sit for a minute or two. Then iron around the design to remove the marks. As you use these napkins and wash them, they may need more ironing. Be sure touse care when ironing your embroideryso you don't ruin the stitches.

Instead of stitching napkins, you could also embroider the designs exactly as they are on the pattern page and frame the piece as a Scandinavian embroidery sampler. You could even make a table runner with these motifs down the center!