William Morris Embroidery Designs You Can Stitch Today

How the original kits worked

From about 1876 Morris designed a series of small square embroidery panels, usually sold as kits. According to the V&A, each kit came with an inked design outlined on plain cloth, to be stitched at home in floss silks provided with the kit.

In the 1890s these small square kits cost about 12 shillings, according to the V&A's record. That price bought the outlined cloth and the silks; the stitching itself was done at home, often by amateurs. The museum holds an embroidered panel titled Olive and Rose that shows the result: floss silk thread worked on a cotton ground, stitched in pale green and cream with a pink background.

The practical implication for a stitcher today is simple. The original product was a prepared cloth with the design already on it, not a chart or a printed pattern leaflet. Anyone reconstructing the experience should start from a transferred outline on plain fabric, then work the stitching by hand.

Two designs you can study before you stitch

Olive and Rose is the clearest worked example in the V&A's collection. The museum attributes the design to William Morris, dating it to about 1880 and the working of the panel to 1880 to 1900, designed and retailed in London. It was produced as a kit by the Morris & Co. workroom and completed by an unknown amateur embroiderer, worked sometime between 1880 and the 1910s.

The second example is a traced design rather than a finished embroidery. The V&A holds a tracing in red ink, dated to the 1880s and made for Morris & Co., attributed to May Morris and titled Welcome Maids of Honour you do bring in the Spring and wait upon her. The tracing shows a floral pattern within a circular border enclosed in a square, with formalised birds with outspread wings in the angles. It is pounced for transfer, meaning holes were pricked along the lines so powder could be tapped through onto the cloth.

An embroidery made to the Welcome Maids of Honour design survives in the collection of the William Morris Gallery, catalogue number F368. Comparing the tracing with a finished panel is the closest thing the record offers to seeing design and execution side by side.

Who drew the designs you would be stitching

Not every embroidery design carrying the Morris name was drawn by William Morris himself. According to the V&A, May Morris, his daughter, was taught large scale crewel work by her mother Jane Morris and her aunt Bessie Burden, working from William Morris's medieval models. In 1885 she took over the embroidery section of Morris & Co., took on the firm after her father's death, and continued to provide designs for embroideries large and small, some carried out by women at the Royal School of Needlework.

The Welcome Maids of Honour tracing is attributed to May Morris in the V&A's record, but the attribution is stated rather than independently confirmed, so describe it that way in any notes or captions. William Morris's own firm history matters too. The V&A records that he added designs for embroidery and tapestry to the company's range in the decade after 1875, alongside printed and woven fabrics and wallpapers.

The family context is easy to follow through William Morris's life, and it matters when crediting a design. A panel stitched today from a Morris & Co. kit design may be the work of William Morris, of May Morris, or of an unknown hand within the firm. Checking which is which is part of the craft, not a footnote to it.

What the evidence does and does not tell you

The museum records used here describe the objects in detail, but they stop short of stitching instructions. Nothing in the sources gives stitch types, thread counts, fabric measurements or working times for these designs. No verbatim guidance on embroidery by William Morris appears in the evidence either, so any quotation about how to stitch should be treated with suspicion.

What the documented record does give you:

• The kit format: an inked outline on plain cloth with floss silks supplied, sold as small square panels from about 1876.
• The materials: floss silk thread on a cotton ground, as the Olive and Rose panel shows.
• A transfer method: the Welcome Maids of Honour tracing is pounced, showing how a paper design moved onto cloth.
• A price point: about 12 shillings for the small square kits in the 1890s.

A short checklist before you start

Work from what the record supports and flag what it does not. This checklist keeps a project honest.

• Confirm the design attribution. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds a traced embroidery design titled Welcome Maids of Honour you do bring in the Spring and wait upon her, attributed to May Morris, in red ink, made for Morris & Co. Check whether a design is credited to William Morris, to May Morris, or only attributed, and say which in your notes.
• Use a museum-documented outline or tracing as your pattern source, not an unverified instruction sheet.
• Follow the kit materials where you can: floss silk on a plain ground fabric, matching the Olive and Rose panel.
• Transfer the design by pouncing if you want to reproduce the documented method, pricking along the drawn lines as the tracing shows.
• Record the source of your design and the museum that holds the original, so your finished piece carries a correct credit.
• If you would rather draw a pattern before stitching it, the story of drawing a Morris-style pattern walks through that process step by step. Teachers adapting this for a class can find more on Morris art lessons on a separate page.