Christmas lights heart with a bow hand embroidery pattern

Easy · 4 colors · 2 kinds of stitch

Christmas lights heart with a bow: preview of the stitched design

A string of Christmas lights is set as a heart and tied with a red bow in its notch. Thirteen lamps stand out from one wire, five red, four gold and four teal, the same to left and right, each in a green socket. The lamps, their sockets and the bow are satin stitch, and the wire is dark green stem stitch.

Size and details

Easy. In a hoop of 6 inches or less: short satin stitches, no shading; in a larger hoop the widest satin stitches are long.

4 colors of floss and 2 kinds of stitch:

The stitched size and the widest satin stitch, by hoop
Hoop	Inches	Centimeters	Satin stitch up to
3 in (8 cm)	1.7 × 1.6 in	4.3 × 4.1 cm	1/8 in (3 mm)
4 in (10 cm)	2.5 × 2.4 in	6.4 × 6.1 cm	3/16 in (5 mm)
5 in (13 cm)	3.4 × 3.1 in	8.6 × 7.9 cm	1/4 in (6 mm)
6 in (15 cm)	4.2 × 3.9 in	10.7 × 9.9 cm	5/16 in (8 mm)
8 in (20 cm)	5.9 × 5.5 in	15 × 14 cm	7/16 in (11 mm)

The pattern is drawn inside a circle about half an inch (1.3 cm) smaller all around than the hoop.

What you need

DMC 986 Very Dark Forest GreenWire and sockets of the lamps
DMC 304 Medium RedRed lamps, tails of the bow, loops of the bow and knot of the bow
DMC 3852 Very Dark StrawGold lamps
DMC 3809 Very Dark TurquoiseTeal lamps

The floss is six-strand cotton; the stitch guide says how many strands to use. You also need a hoop, an embroidery needle (a size 7 to 9 suits two or three strands) and plain cotton or linen fabric. To frame the piece in its hoop, cut a square 3 inches (8 cm) wider than the hoop: a 9 inch (23 cm) square for a 6 inch hoop.

Stitch guide

Stem stitch 2 or 3 strandsWire
Satin stitch 2 strandsLamps, sockets of the lamps, tails of the bow, loops of the bow, knot of the bow

Getting it onto your fabric

The PDF holds the pattern twice at actual size: once as drawn, and once mirrored for an iron-on transfer pen. Print it at 100% with scaling off and check the one-inch square (25.4 mm) with a ruler before you trace. How to transfer a pattern explains tracing, carbon paper and the other ways. The files are under Downloads.