Christmas Cats Border with Lights Embroidery Design, Instant Download

Narrow border, lots going on in a small space. The design stacks a row of little hatted cats along a vertical strip, with a looping string of round bulbs weaving between them. Each cat wears a different hat, a party hat here, a Santa hat there, and the wire dips and rises in those gentle curves you'd recognise from actual christmas lights strung up on a porch. The whole thing is tight and contained, which is exactly what youre looking for when the project is a towel hem or a linen edge.

10 colour changes total, which sounds like alot for a border this small but the sequencing isnt complicated. The file runs charcoal grey and mid grey for the cat bodies, white for the light wire sections, red and orange for the hat details, pink and soft blush for the bulb glow patches. Set up in my digitising suite. The density at 1,468 stitches per square inch keeps everything readable even at the 3.5-inch tall smallest size without the fills looking sparse. At the 7.5-inch largest hoop youll want to watch your bobbin thread tension so the long vertical run doesnt cause any drag.

A customer who wanted this for kraft-coloured cotton tea towels mentioned the matte charcoal cats looked like block-print on the natural ground, which I thought was a good way to put it. Thats the contrast that makes this border readable without being loud. Choose tearaway on woven cotton and linen, medium weight is plenty for these stitch counts. If youre hooping something thinner like a flour-sack weave, add a layer of water-soluble topping so the lighter fill areas dont disappear into the fabric tooth.

The strip measures only 0.88 to 1.88 inches wide, so it slots into a 1-inch hem band with room to spare. Stitch along the long edge of a napkin, down the front placket of an apron, or along the cuff of a cotton bag. Avoid placing it on a curved seam without extra hooping support, the long narrow format needs a flat stable base or the registration drifts on the bulb wire sections.