Snowflake Biscornu

Biscornu's have been popular for a few years now. I've always admired them but haven't tried making one until recently. Last weekend, my Embroiderers' Guild of America chapter had a program on biscornu finishing. Several beautiful designs where provided but I wanted to do my own thing.

A biscornu, a many sided object, is made with one or two stitched squares so any square design will work. Since the design comes together at the corners and the center is indented I sensed interesting possibilities. I wanted my design to take advantage of these features.

In December I made tons of paper snowflakes and decided a paper snowflake would be a great inspiration. So, I designed a cross-stitch snowflake just as I would cut one out of paper. I only worked with one quadrant adding cutouts and other shapes and then "unfolded" it to get the finished snowflake.

For fun I stitched it in two colorways, light green on purple and dark teal on gray. After that experience I do not recommend purple linen, no matter how good it looks, it is very difficult to stitch on. Even with a sheet of white paper behind it was very difficult to see the threads to stitch over two.

I couldn't decide on purple or gray for the connecting stitch so compromised with pink. It seemed like a good idea, but all the mistakes I made learning the stitch are visible. I don't care. I like the result. But next time I'll probably won't contrast as much.

The next element of the biscournu is the buttons that hold the center dimple in place. I always enjoy dumping out the button jar and seeing what's inside.

There where many possibilities but I liked the pearl-like buttons the best so that's what I used.

So here is the finished biscornu with the paper snowflake.

Ok, my first biscornu is complete and I'm officially addicted. I have so many ideas for more snowflake patterns and other biscornu patterns that I'll be working on.

This pattern is available at http://www.patternsonline.com/

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