Folk Art Bird Ornament by Trish Burr

There is a reason why some of today’s needlework artisans are as popular as they are.

When we approached Trish Burr to create a project to feature in our new book The Design Collective | Christmas, not only did Trish create a gorgeous Christmas decoration that we would all like hanging on our tree please, Trish also layered into her design process a series of really clever considerations.

Finished with oriental red Mill Hill glass seed beads that appear to dance around the perimeter, it also has a red and white striped ribbon that forms a pretty bow at the base of a hanging loop.

Taking this piece on face value, it’s a wonderful, clean design worked in Trish’s trademark technique that she describes as whitework with colour. It is texturally rich thanks to the use of padded satin stitch to raise up the hero elements, along with a clever selection of surface embroidered finishes to bring interest and variation to each motif.

Beginning with beautiful folk imagery as her base, Trish created a design synonymous with the Scandinavian aesthetic that, thanks to its simplicity, uses less materials to re-create and ticks one of Trish’s design considerations – keeping the cost down. 

From there you gain the added benefit of it being a relatively small project to stitch and, as you can quite easily work up several of them, the Folk Art Bird Ornament is a wonderful option to create as Christmas gifts for your friends and family.

Then, for the icing on the cake, Trish restricts her colour palette to a handful of hues – yellow, red, orange, grey and white. How does this help? If you, like Trish, get bored stitching the same project over and over, or you would like to create customised Folk Art Birds for each recipient, you can easily swap colours.

Image if you replaced the yellow, red and orange threads with gradients of blue, or perhaps green, maybe purple or how about pink? Imagine a complete set of Folk Art Bird Ornaments adorning your own tree in a series of different colours. The options are endless…

Step 1 – Purchase Project Instructions

Folk Art Bird Ornament by Trish Burr is a colourful bird with flowers and snowflakes inspired by Scandinavian folk art.

Step 2 – Purchase Ready-To-Stitch Kit

The Inspirations Ready-To-Stitch kit for Folk Art Bird Ornament includes everything* you need to re-create this hanging ornament: Fabrics (inc. with pre-printed design), wool felt, card, ribbon, white sewing thread, embroidery threads, beads and needle.

*Please Note: To cater for flexibility of purchase, instructions are not included with our kits. For step-by-step directions on how to create this project, please refer to the book.