It seems that everyone who sews finds special joy in creating dainty baby things. I’ve made my fair share and yet I look forward to making more as I hope for yet another grandchild. Given my enthusiasm for sewing what my friend Janice Kay calls “bitty baby things,” I still cannot resist buying antique dresses when I come across a sweet one.
So often, bits and pieces are all that remains of what once was a spectacular piece of needlework. It’s likely that I have hoarding tendencies, because the idea of throwing away the beautiful stitches of an unknown and long since departed kindred spirit is abhorrent to me. And I have boxes of these bits and pieces to prove it.
No doubt one or two of these are lace pieces from Queen Elizabeth's play dresses.
So often, bits and pieces are all that remains of what once was a spectacular piece of needlework. It’s likely that I have hoarding tendencies, because the idea of throwing away the beautiful stitches of an unknown and long since departed kindred spirit is abhorrent to me. And I have boxes of these bits and pieces to prove it.
Crazy patch is my preferred technique for these items.  Pillows seem particularly suitable as they are laundered infrequently, putting the aged beauties at less risk of damage. This pillow is made of some of the remnants in my stash. Each tells a silent story, the tale of its origin which I plot out as I stitch the pieces together. Continue reading
After the Everything-Wrong Birthday Suit post, writing about this dress is very soothing. It does not give me an absolute sigh of satisfaction, but I am pretty pleased with it.
There is a lot to love about the dress: Chery Williams Wedding Ring Dress pattern, Capitol Imports champagne Swiss batiste, champagne Swiss beading, peach lace tape, miles of hemstitching, both pinstitch and entredeux, and a nylon French lace which requires almost no ironing. There will be more about the lace later. Continue reading
Posted in girls, hand embroidery, heirloom sewing, lace tape
Blue paper has been placed behind the towel so the fil tire' would show up in the scan. The towel is white.
Or make pretty guest towels, like this one. Ralph is so on target as he observed that we all want to go the extra mile to make our house pleasant for guests. To that end, most readers and the writer of this blog  usually go the shorter and more pleasant mile to our sewing machines rather than driving to the grocery store to please our guests.
The linen towel in the photo was lovely even before the addition of machine embroidery. Threaded with silk ribbon, two rows of hemstitching border a row of classic padded satin stitch dots.   It was pristine.
Further embellished with Suzanne Sawko’s design, it is lovelier still.  The  hand-look fil tire’ oval is stitched with a wing needle and 80 wt. Madeira Cotona thread. The oval is surrounded by greenery and pinwheel roses hovering over an entredeux vine with more flowers.  Strands of the same green thread are woven through the entredeux stitches afterlazy daisy flowerettes have sprung from the vine.
These two designs, the fil tire’ wreath and the entredeux vine, are part of the Fil Tire’ and Fancywork Combinations embroidery design collection done by Suzanne Sawko and me.
I have taught this project in Huntsville, AL, at Martha Pullen’s School of Art Fashion as well as in Myrtle Beach, SC, San Juan, Puerto Rico and various other locations. Without exception, as students examine the sample before class, their first comment is an incredulous query about the apparent bullion rose at the center of the vine. Was this done on the embroidery machine?  The answer is both yes and no. Continue reading
Once again I am offering a re-run, an article written for Creative Needle magazine some time ago. As I was thumbing through my old issues, this jumped out at me as I thought about modern projects for old fashioned Nanas. This is quick and easy handwork at its best.
The 2 year series was entitled Antique Textiles: Loving, Collecting and Using. I certainly love antique textiles and collected enough for several sewing lifetimes. I’m still working on using. Continue reading
Children’s Corner Katina pattern
Using linen towels for sewing is not a new idea, but it is one which I think is worthy of repetition. The sundress Laurel is wearing is made from an Irish linen bath towel. Measuring 29″ wide by 42″ long, it is a generous size for a skirt front. These imported towels are such a bargain. Not only does the buyer get a lot of linen for a relatively small price, the extensive handwork is quite lovely.
The towel was cut in half, rendering two pieces each 29″ x 21″. Cut from Children’s Corner Sissy/Katina pattern, the size 4 sundress uses the embroidered half for the front and the plain half for the back. Scraps of linen from other projects were used to cut the narrow front and back yokes as well as the straps. Blue piping outlines the yokes.
Maybe I should have a whole category dedicated to Swiss flannel projects. This is yet another of the many items I have made with this luscious fabric and I don’t ever seem to tire of it.
Earlier, a similar white blanket was made, using regular Swiss flannel and featured in the post Antique Carriage Blanket. This one was made in anticipation of the birth of my second grandson, Alastair. I enjoyed using the bold dark blue in the flowers. Continue reading
…a little child, born yesterday,
A thing on mother’s milk and kisses fed…
~”Hymn to Mercury” (one of the Homeric Hymns), translated from Greek by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Swiss flannel cap with antique silk grosgrain ribbon and it’s-gotta-get-better featherstitching.
This little guy was not born yesterday, but he certainly has thrived on mother’s milk and kisses. In fact, if the amount of milk and kisses he has received were accurately reflected in his size, he would be bigger than a four year-old. But he is a good sized boy at 10 months and has already worn his last heirloom daygown and bonnet.
Alastair, 2 1/2 months old
I think few things are sweeter than a baby wearing a bonnet. This cap is part of my grandson’s coming home outfit and coordinates with the blanket and daygown shown in earlier posts. Continue reading
Alastair, 2 1/2 months, on antique carriage cover. He had nearly outgrown this daygown, but this was the first time that the harried new parents got around to taking a picture for me. It DID fit when he came home, but at 9 lb.s 6 oz. it didn’t fit very long!
One of the first things I made for Alastair’s layette was his coming home outfit. The daygown was made from Maggie’s Classics Daygown #113 pattern. The matching blanket was featured in a previous post and the sweet little cap will be shown soon.
Obviously, this picture was taken lonnnnnng after he came home from the hospital. He was 2 ½ months old and the gown is ridiculously short. When he was newborn, the length was adequate if not generous.  But were I to make another, I would make it much longer. You can see that it still fits him except for the length. But if it had been cut longer, he could have worn it much longer. Continue reading
Before the name “fagoting” was deemed politically incorrect by some in the heirloom sewing industry, well known designer Kitty Benton published several patterns named for this technique. There were patterns for fagoted bibs, bonnets, round yoke dresses, collars and more.
Fagoting, or “bridging” as it is now sometimes known,  is the joining of lace to lace, lace to ribbon, or the joining of any two finished edges with any one of several handwork stitches. By enlarging the above photo, you will see that several different stitches have been used to join the pieces. To maintain an equal distance between the two edges, the pieces are hand basted to a paper pattern with lines defining the space to be filled with the stitches.
