At the time of writing, the UK is into its 3rd lockdown as the battle against COVID-19 continues. To keep myself sane, I have turned once again to embroidery. It calms my energy, occupies my thoughts and keeps me creative. This embroidery design was created in particular to focus on the more positive aspects of a winter lockdown. “Stay Home Stay Cosy”; a chance to stay closest to your own household, to snuggle up and hunker down through these darkest of days.

You can download this pattern below, and there are two versions including cosy/cozy (depending on how you like to spell it). I go on to outline the stitches I used, although you don’t have to stick to them!

And if you are here because you love to sew, try signing up for my Creative Sewing Challenge. Its a no-pressure sewing challenge designed to help keep us all sewing when life gets busy. Find out more here or sign up below.

This design works with a 4 inch hoop.

I used an LED pad to trace my design onto white felt, using a heat erasing pen. If you want to learn about other options for transferring embroidery patterns, see my post here.

I then started with satin stitch to fill the heart, working horizontally at first, then vertically. This gave my heart a nice, raised and puffy effect.

Here’s the finished heart…

I used a combination of backstitch and chain stitch on the lettering to denote the thin and thick part of the letters to give it that lovely italic flow. However, you could just use backstitch, as I did with my Alice in Wonderland hoop here.

For the flowers I chose to fill each flower with woven wheel stitch.

And for the leaves I used a tiny fishbone stitch.

And there you have it, a finished hoop and a pretty reminder to try to make the best of the crazy times we are living through.

I hope you enjoy working with this pattern, may it bring you much calm and pleasure to create. Please do tag me on Instagram @amylovestosew to share your work, I always love to see how my designs are used.

And don’t forget to sign up for the Creative Sewing Challenge for monthly prompts, ideas and sewing inspiration.