A really big freebie

Right – it’s time for a freebie, and after some thought, and encouragement from blog reader Ramona, I’ve decided to give away the big Jacobean bellpull that I posted some time ago. Now, this is a BIG project, made up of 6 different individual designs, so I’ll need to spread it out over several months, posting one design a month. Please note that these are very large designs: not in the sense of size (they’re all for the 5×7 hoop) but they all have a lot of stitches – somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 stitches for each part

There are three ways you can use these designs. First, you can stitch all 6 pieces separately and use them separately in various ways – cushions, bags, quilts or whatever. Second, you can stitch them separately and then sew the pieces together to make a single long piece. Or, third, you can prepare and stabilise a single long piece of fabric, measuring approximately 50 x 15 inches, and stitch the designs in sequence, starting at the bottom with “Bellpull 1”, to make a single long embroidery. This will be much easier to do if you have a video camera attachment on your machine – otherwise you’ll have to be very good at aligning designs on your machine. If you choose this way to do it, it will help if, before stitching, you fold the fabric in half lengthways and mark the centre of the piece with a line of basting stitching. That will help you align the piece of fabric with the centre of your hoop when you’re hooping it

Just for reference – the design “Bellpull 1” goes right at the bottom of the bellpull. Next is Bellpull 2” and so on up the stem. If you get the alignment right, the stems of the separate designs should line up to make a single stem running through the whole bellpull

I’m posting two of the designs today, because I’ll be away in August at the time that I usually post freebies, so you can make a start on these two and I’ll be back in September with number 3.

Here’s the file for Bellpull 1, and here’s the worksheet for it. Here’s Bellpull 2 and the worksheet

Good luck!

IMPORTANT! There have been some problems with the format of Bellpull 2. I've re-saved it and I HOPE it will work now. Please let me know if you have problems. Thanks!