Three jingle bells on a bow hand embroidery pattern

Intermediate · 4 colors · 1 kind of stitch

Three jingle bells on a bow: preview of the stitched design

Three jingle bells hang from a red bow on three green ribbons that fan from its knot, the middle one lowest. Each bell is gold, with a yellow cap and two yellow ridges across it, and its hole and slit are left as bare cloth. The bow has two full loops and two tails that sweep down to either side. Everything is satin stitch.

Size and details

Intermediate. Satin stitch over about a fifth of the cloth in a 6 inch hoop; from a 5 inch hoop up some of the satin stitches are long.

4 colors of floss and 1 kind of stitch:

Satin stitch
Which stitch goes where

The stitched size and the widest satin stitch, by hoop
Hoop	Inches	Centimeters	Satin stitch up to
3 in (8 cm)	1.6 × 1.7 in	4.1 × 4.3 cm	3/16 in (5 mm)
4 in (10 cm)	2.4 × 2.5 in	6.1 × 6.4 cm	1/4 in (6 mm)
5 in (13 cm)	3.2 × 3.3 in	8.1 × 8.4 cm	3/8 in (10 mm)
6 in (15 cm)	4 × 4.2 in	10.2 × 10.7 cm	7/16 in (11 mm)
8 in (20 cm)	5.6 × 5.8 in	14.2 × 14.7 cm	5/8 in (16 mm)

In an 8 inch hoop the widest satin stitch shape is 5/8 in (16 mm) across. Satin stitches longer than about 12 mm (just under 1/2 in) tend to work loose: divide the shape into sections, or work it in long and short stitch.

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 GreenRibbons of the bells
DMC 726 Light TopazCaps of the bells and ridges of the bells
DMC 3852 Very Dark StrawJingle bells
DMC 304 Medium RedTails of the bow, loops of the bow and knot of the bow

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

Satin stitch 2 strandsRibbons of the bells, caps of the bells, jingle bells, ridges of the bells, 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.