Varnish & Thread: FREE Snowy Cottage Holly Wreath Mini Cross Stitch Pattern, Victorian Christmas Card (PDF)
A free mini cross-stitch pattern from Varnish & Thread: a snowy cottage and fence framed by a wreath of green holly with red berries, charted from a Victorian New Year card printed for Kinney Bros. in 1889–90. Small and wintry, it suits a Christmas ornament, a card or a small hoop.
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This is a digital download of PDF patterns. Nothing is shipped: no fabric, floss, hoop or printed paper.
WHAT'S INCLUDED
• Printable colour + symbol chart (PDF, 5 pages): cover with finished sizes, how-to page, DMC floss key (symbol, DMC number, colour name, stitch count, skein estimate), 1 chart page with a bold line every 10 stitches, and a page of links to the shop
• Black-symbol chart designed for Pattern Keeper (PDF, 5 pages), same chart
• Full cross stitch only: no backstitch, no fractional stitches
SIZE AND FLOSS
• 50 × 46 stitches (2,300 stitches), 12 DMC colours
• Finished size: 14-count Aida 3.6 × 3.3 in (9.1 × 8.3 cm); 18-count Aida 2.8 × 2.6 in (7.1 × 6.5 cm)
• DMC floss: 739, 435, 832, 3346, 937, 977, 606, 3045, 934, 3012, 839, 830
• The cream background is charted too (DMC 739, 1,238 stitches). On cream Aida you can leave it unstitched; the design itself is 1,062 stitches.
• It's a detail of the card: the holly wreath and snowy cottage. The greeting text and most of the mistletoe are left out.
PATTERN KEEPER
The symbol PDF is designed for Pattern Keeper: real font symbols, a key with Number and Name columns, Letter-size pages of up to 60 × 70 stitches and no overlapping rows, following Pattern Keeper's published import guidance. It hasn't been tested in the app itself yet, so I don't call it compatible. It also prints normally.
MORE PATTERNS
Two other cards from the same 1890 Kinney Bros. series (Mr. Holly and Miss Mistletoe, and a Christmas pudding) are in the Victorian Christmas Ornament Minis set: https://payhip.com/b/CLXwJ
More museum-art patterns, including Currier & Ives, Thomas Nast's Santa and Prang's holly: https://payhip.com/VarnishAndThread
THE ARTWORK (PUBLIC DOMAIN)
Happy New Year, from the New Years 1890 series (N227) issued by Kinney Bros. Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company, 1889–90. Commercial color lithograph. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, object 726872 (acc. Burdick 218, N227.25). The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick. Met Open Access image, CC0 1.0. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/726872
Chart design by Varnish & Thread. Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the museum or DMC.
Charted by software from public-domain museum art; the preview is a digital render, not stitched work. Colours on screen and paper are approximations; always choose floss by its DMC number.
Free for personal use. Please share the link to this page rather than the file, and don't resell the pattern.