Embroidery Kits

An embroidery kit by Moroz Embroidery is a treasure chest—each element you unfold sets the tone for a process full of discovery and inspiration.

You don’t need professional skills to embroider these designs.

The Botanical Illustration and Fashion series include detailed PDF instructions and a training video that clearly demonstrates all techniques used in the embroidery process. Each kit comes with all the necessary materials.

The Cabinet of Curiosities series includes a printed instruction booklet with suggestions on techniques and how to use the provided materials. These kits contain a selection of intriguing supplies—each one a spark to ignite your creative ideas.

The second dress I chose for the collective project is the gown of Flora
from Botticelli’s painting.

The irony and charm of the situation lie in the fact that Mary Delany’s dress truly existed, but its appearance remains unknown. Meanwhile, the cut of Flora’s gown can be studied in detail—yet it came into physical existence only through the collaborative work of thirty embroiderers.

The process of creating this dress was similar to that of the Mary Delany dress: I began by drafting a technical sketch and a mock-up of Flora’s gown.

The embroidery designs were carefully traced from Botticelli’s painting with maximum precision.
While developing the technical sketch, my task was to capture the fluidity of the garment as depicted by Botticelli, take into account the fashion features and cut of the historical period, and translate all of that into pattern lines.

Next, I selected a fabric — silk with a warm pearly hue. Each participant in the project embroidered a specific part of the dress, such as a section of the hem. I sent each embroiderer a piece of fabric with a marked design.

Each one then stitched her flowers.

When all embroidered pieces were returned to me, I assembled them into the finished dress.
Flora descended to us from the orange grove...

Project author: Katerina Moroz

Participants:
Elena Knyazeva, Elena Gafarova,
Anastasia Bedritskaya, Tatyana Sinyagina, Lida Lobanova,
Evgenia Zhmaeva, Anastasia Ovcharenko, Natasha Kim, Olga Osadchaya,
Ekaterina Gabdullina, Evgenia Shutova, Daria Alexandrova,
Olga Byshenko, Vita Dolgovykh, Evgenia Avershina, Nadezhda Vitvechberg,
Apollinaria Solnyshkina, Elena Erofeeva, Evgenia Sasova,
Daria Manshina, Oksana Dementieva, Elizaveta Kuzmina,
Irina Safronova, Ekaterina Gerasimova, Maria Prokhorenko,
Evgenia Baslina, Ksenia Nikolaeva, Natalya Usatskaya.

The project “Mary Delany’s Dress” was conceived as a collective work to recreate an imaginary gown that the famous 18th-century English artist might have worn to a court event.
The actual dress has not survived. But some embroidered fragments believed to have been part of it are preserved. The project is also based on descriptions of the dress in Mary Delany’s correspondence with her sister, as well as historical research into the cut of court gowns of that period.

At court, dress was regulated. Ladies wore gowns that strictly followed this ceremonial world. Formal and expensive, they differed greatly from fashionable dresses worn outside the court. For most of the artist’s life, the prevailing court style consisted of a mantua and an underskirt (petticoat).

The mantua was a gown with a fitted bodice and a train at the back that continued over the front of the dress in the form of skirt panels. The bodice was fastened at the front with a V-shaped insert called a stomacher. The mantua was worn over an underskirt that was almost entirely visible, usually with very wide volume at the hips. This volume was created with whalebone hoops.

Englishwomen first began wearing mantuas in the 1660s as informal dress, but by the early 18th century they had been adopted as appropriate court wear and later became mandatory.

The garment created during the project is a large-scale (1:2) dress made of dense black fabric, covered with millefleurs-style embroidery. I aimed to ensure that the cut of the dress corresponded as closely as possible to the fashion of the period.

The gown consists of three parts: a mantua with skirt panels and a double train, a stomacher, and an underskirt. The underskirt is set on a structured frame that creates volume at the hips.

The embroidery designs for the fantasy gown were based on collages from Mary Delany’s album Flora Delanica — the artist’s most celebrated project. These works are detailed and botanically accurate depictions of plants, created using paper and pigments. Often mistaken at first glance for watercolours, they are in fact meticulously crafted paper collages, or “paper mosaics,” as the artist herself called them.

The project began in 1772. Over nearly ten years, Mary Delany produced 985 works.
Remarkably, she began creating her floral collages at the age of seventy-two.

Throughout her life, the artist was passionate about gardening. Mary Delany often stayed at Bulstrode with her close friend, the Dowager Duchess of Portland. They shared a deep interest in botany and frequently went in search of rare plant specimens. At her friend’s house, Delany met many of the leading botanists of her time, such as Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, who had a significant influence on her work.

Mrs. Delany always worked from life. As her collage method gained popularity, both amateur gardeners and professional botanists — including those from the famous Kew Gardens in London — began sending her plant specimens from their collections. Usually they sent two plants: one for experiments and one to work from.

The artist took great pleasure in sharing her collage technique. Many similar collages by other authors have survived.

In addition to botanical illustration in the “paper mosaic” technique, Mary Delany worked in various disciplines throughout her life: drawing, painting, and embroidery. She created interior objects and took part in arranging and decorating homes — both her own and those of her friends.

After Mary Delany’s death in 1788, the ten volumes of Flora Delanica were inherited by Lady Llanover, the daughter of Mary’s sister. Lady Llanover, who died in 1896 at the age of ninety-four, bequeathed the volumes to the British Museum, where they have since become some of the most sought-after works in the Prints and Drawings Department. They can still be viewed today by appointment. Because the paper mosaics are extremely fragile, only a small selection is available for study. However, two of Delany’s works can be seen in the permanent Enlightenment Gallery (Room 1) of the British Museum.

In 2021–2022, a group of thirty-five embroiderers completed the project of creating the fantasy gown.

Download the project catalog