Here Be Lions – PDF Pattern

This is a companion piece to Here Be Dragons, though you can choose to stitch it as a standalone piece as well!

Medieval maps often depicted dragons on the outer edges, indicating uncharted and dangerous territory. Often however the words “Hic sunt Leones” (here be lions) would show up, together with depections of lions. I love this metaphor of dragons and lions for the unknown and dangerous. For this design I used a border from a model book from the late 1500s by Bernhard Jobin. The dragon was is completely original but was inspired by images of heraldic lions.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

This design measures 189 crosses in width and 149 crosses in height. Below is an estimate of the finished stitched size on various counts of linen / aida:

28ct linen / 14ct aida: 105/8” x 131/2” (27 x 34.5cm)

 32ct linen / 26ct aida: 93/8” x 117/8” (23.5 x 30cm)

 36ct linen / 18ct aida: 83/8” x 101/2” (21 x 26.5 cm)

 40ct linen / 20ct aida: 7 1/2” x 91/2” (19 x 24cm)

 46ct linen: 61/2” x 81/8” (16.5 x 21cm)

Here Be Lions can be stitched in a wide variety of ways: Only stitch the black square symbols (the positive space), or choose to stitch only the background (the negative space).

From there, you can choose to stitch the positive as a dark on a light background (the cover artwork) or a light on a dark background. The same goes for the negative space. You could even choose to stitch this design as a full cover piece! 

There’s a total of 12630 crosses in the positive version. The negative version has a few more: 15531. On average, you can stitch about 1800 crosses with 2 pulled strands from an 8-yard hank of floss over two threads on 32-count linen. The positive requires at least 7 skeins, the negative space requires 9 skeins.

I will be stitching my version using Roxy Floss Co’s “Gomez”, You can buy the Roxy floss and linens at www.evertote.ca – but as ever, feel free to pick your very own selection of colours and linens!