These designs are based on turn-of-the-century layover shams I was lucky enough to find. The design is very Art Nouveau, especially the script. The flower is a tiger lily, very popular in this era. I just love these designs! These require very small embroidery stitches to follow the swirly curves, I probably wouldn't recommend these kits to anyone who hasn't had some experience with redwork embroidery. As always, though, with redwork, the designs are not difficult to execute, just require a little more patience.

The original shams are very large, larger than our present day pillows so I reduced the size of the design to fit a smaller size pillow. The designs featured in my kits are approximately 12" by 8.5". I made these kits into 16" x 12" pillows with a three inch flange. I worked a row of herringbone stitch on the flange for more interest and backed the pillows in a bold red buffalo check (matches my homemade headboard in our guest bedroom).

I have had many requests for patterns for matched shams with a 'bedtime' sentiment, so, for this design, I am also offering just the pattern, enlarged to fit a sheet of 11" by 17" paper, printed on white stock which can be enlarged or reduced as needed to fit the pillow sham size of your choice. I am offering the pattern alone for $6.00.

The kits include the design (approximately 12" x 8.5") hand-drawn in water soluble pencil on a 45" x 25" piece of pure white cotton batiste (actually 65% cotton/35% poly on the recommendation of my local needlework store for better wear and washability) and two skeins of embroidery thread in your choice of red or blue. I am also including a color picture of the completed redwork as well as instructions for the embroidery stitches. The kit does not include instructions for fashioning the completed redwork embroidery into a pillow, tea cloth, etc.

The 45" x 25" piece of cotton batiste is ample to be either fashioned into a pillow, the top for a pillow sham, a tea cloth, or mounted and framed, as you see fit to use it.