Nicholas Owen – Free Mini Bargello Pattern

Dragonfly Lotus makes a wonderful line of hand-spun and hand-dyed threads (red my review of some of them). Recently they have come out with a charming line of semi-solid colors in frosted shades.

These 17 colors combine lovely shades with a bit of white for that “frosted” look. The thread is a blend of merino wool and bamboo rayon. The white is more obvious in the darker shades than in the lighter, but they make for some wonderful harmonies.

I picked four colors from the group for this mini Bargello: Frosted Ash Beige,Frosted Carrot, Frosted Dandelion, and Frosted Burnt Orange. I arranged then from dark to light and just repeated the color sequence. The pattern is adapted from one in Bargello Sampler.

I’m putting it in a mahogany Mini Box from Sudberry. I think the rich wood tones will set it off nicely.

This pattern is named after one of my Favorite Saints, St. Nicholas Owen, a Jesuit lay brother, carpenter, and English martyr. He was the maker of many priest holes throughout England in the late 16th and early 17th Century. His final imprisonment was after the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and he died under torture in 1606. You can read more about him in his Wikipedia article.