Peas and English Daisies by Susan O’Connor

Susan O’Connor is famous for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is being the editor of the world’s most beautiful needlework magazine! However, Susan is also a highly accomplished and celebrated designer in her own right with many best-selling books to her name, including the title ‘Embroidered Flowers for Elizabeth’.

The spectacular embroidered blanket featured in the book was inspired by the sumptuous style of the Elizabethan era and is rich in colour and decoration. The blanket features 12 large ornate motifs and 12 smaller designs, each representative of Queen Elizabeth I’s favourite flowers and fruit.

Following on from the huge popularity of this book and coupled with a passion for all things Elizabethan, Susan has chosen a selection of motifs from the blanket to create a series of stunning pinwheels. Each pinwheel features one of the large motifs on the front and one of the small designs on the back.

With a total of 4 in the series, the first 2 pinwheels were Strawberry and Cornflower plus Rose and Heartsease, both of which were released under the name ‘Serendipity’ and featured in the original A Passion for Needlework book.

Peas and English Daisies is now the third project of the series to be released and is included in Inspirations issue #100 as a free digital pattern, or you can purchase it separately with a Ready-to-Stitch kit also available.

To adapt the motifs from their original application on the blanket for use on the smaller pinwheels, Susan reduced them all in size and stitched them in silk using Au Ver à Soie, soie d’Alger threads on latté silk duchess satin fabric, instead of wool on wool.

The end result is the same beautiful designs we fell in love on the blanket, only now in a more refined, more petite finish.

Oh, and if you’ve ever wondered how the pins end up so evenly spaced around the outside of the wheel, the trick is to insert a pin through every second stitch, and depending on the size of your finished wheel, you’ll end up with around 40 pins all safely and beautifully stored.     

Step 1 – Purchase Project Instructions

Peas and English Daisies by Susan O’Connor is a delightful embroidered pinwheel with Elizabethan inspired botanicals.

Step 2 – Purchase Ready-To-Stitch Kit

The Inspirations Ready-To-Stitch kit for Peas and English Daisies includes everything you need to re-create this delightful pinwheel: Fabric (unprinted), wadding, embroidery threads, paillettes, pins and needles.