Nordiska of Gothenburg, 1960.
Circle 6503 was originally printed on a soft, fine pale blue linen and embroidered with white cotton threads.
Nordiska Circle is a great starter kit for anyone who wants to learn embroidery. It's one of the most popular designs and was the first pattern out of the archive in 2018, a great pattern to use as a sampler to practise your skills.
This listing does not include threads: use your own thread collection or select colours from our current thread sale HERE
Included in this listing:
If you like to use a hoop, choose one that is at least 30 cm across, or a smaller one that can be moved as you stitch along.
Included in this set is:
- A 100% linen cloth, 50 x 50 cm, all are hand cut and hand printed linen and may vary slightly. The design itself measures 29 cm in diameter, centred on the square.
- A stitch card showing the 24 most common 60's linen embroidery stitches.
This card is an exact copy of Nordiska's 60's stitch card, once written on a typewriter in Gothenburg, we have kept it as it looked, typo and all.
The other card shows part of a drawing of this design as it was found in the Nordiska Embroidery Archive, and part the original embroidered piece in blue and white, with a brief history of it's origins and named stitches on the back of the card. The six named stitches are stem stitch, chain stitch, lazy daisy stitch, Y-stitch, couching stitch and French knots.
The panel is often used as a sampler, with many different stitches added.
The original pattern instructions have not yet been found, we are searching for them and hope to find a copy of the original sheet one day.
You will need to decide where to add the stitches and colours, and we encourage improvisation.
Linen always look best if it isn't washed, and we recommend keeping it as it is, just as Nordiska did in the 1960's. Their notes would say "dry clean only", at least when the kits were presented in the UK, as we can see in issues of The Needlewoman Catalogue from that era.
We hope you will love this Nordiska treasure just as much as we do!
Please note that his is a screenprint with permanent colour,
the white marks will not wash off.