Table of contents for May - June 2016 in PieceWork

Once again, we devote the May/June issue of PieceWork to lace. And once again, our contributors have gone above and beyond to bring you an array of stories. Many have a personal connection—Julie Turjoman writes about her grandfather’s lace and embroidery company; Lowanne E. Jones shares her great-grandmother’s wedding jacket; Nancy Bush profiles her friend and Haapsalu lace master, Linda Elgas; and the list goes on. Projects include knitted, crocheted, and tatted lace. Among them is the Bonnie Rose Baby Bonnet by Laura Ricketts, which Laura designed in parts because the filet-crochet section is time-consuming. Laura explains, “That way, if the bonnet is to be a gift, the crocheter can work the central panel ahead of time. After the birth, when the baby’s initials and birth date are known, the…

From the 1920s through the 1960s, my grandfather Moses Front Gantz owned and operated a New York City lace manufacturing company: Record Lace & Embroidery. The youngest of six children, Moses was born in 1891 on New York’s Lower East Side at a time when its tenements were teeming with immigrants from many European countries. His parents had fled the pogroms in Poland, seeking a better life for their family by immigrating to the United States in the mid-1880s. Although Moses was an avid reader and considered to be very bright, his parents’ precarious financial circumstances curtailed his education opportunities. When he reached the age of fifteen, the family’s poverty required him to forego his formal education and get a job that would help to support the family. Census records…

People have worn hats for millennia for endlessly varied reasons. Yet it seems to me that in the early twenty-first century general hat wearing—other than head wear for warmth on cold days and the ubiquitous baseball cap—has gone out of fashion. Still, though I can go a day without spotting a member of the public wearing a hat, if shown flashcards of hat wearers, I can easily distinguish between a member of the military, a butcher, a woman attending the Kentucky Derby, a queen, pharaoh, or a member of a religious sect by just a glance at his or her hat. People have worn hats for warmth, for protection in war and from weather, for religious reasons, to indicate status, for bodily decoration, and more. In cold areas of the…

I like to mark the stitches that are sewn at the corners, in order to know exactly how my edge will fit to the center. To do this, I take a fine light-colored cotton thread (I use embroidery floss) and mark the first 18 stitches of the outer edge by slipping the stitches to be sewn to the center onto this thread. Then, with another color, I place the next 12 stitches onto a thread. I also do this on the center, placing the first 6 stitches onto the first color thread (the 18 will be attached to these 6 stitches) and the next 6 onto the second color of thread (the 12 will be attached to these 6). I do this for each corner, so as I am sewing,…

I combined stitch patterns from some of my favorite Icelandic shawls to create this triangular shawl design. Beginning from the top, lines of eyelets repeat every six rows. The spider border is outlined in reverse stockinette stitch, and the shawl ends in a flower-and-leaf edging that is bound off with crocheted chains. Four colors of Einband Icelandic lace yarn were used for the sample, but the shawl can be knitted in a single color or many. Because the border can be started after any two repeats (twelve rows) of eyelet, it is easy to customize the size and adapt the design to other laceweight, fingering-weight, and Shetland/sport/DK-weight yarns. MATERIALS Lopi Einband, 100% Icelandic wool yarn, laceweight, 273 yards (249.6 m)/50 gram (1.8 oz) skein, 1 skein each of #1026 Light…

Ida May Allen did not have an easy childhood. She was born on August 26, 1863, in the midst of the upheavals of the Civil War (1861–1865) and almost four months after the divorce of her parents, Wealthy Ann Allen and Robert Franklin, on May 6, 1863. Although Ida May’s maternal grandmother still lived nearby in Lapeer County, Michigan, she was elderly, herself dependent on family and unable to provide much support. A much older brother also lived in the neighborhood, but by then he was already providing for his own large family. Although it is possible that Wealthy Allen, just twenty, may have lived for a time with relatives, she soon was forced to make her way as best she could, burdened with her baby, Ida May, and her…

Many of the traditional forms of headgear in the Middle East and northern Africa are practical acknowledgments of climate. Scarves I wore when I lived in Mongolia were essential for covering the eyes and face during a sandstorm. Headgear from Northern Africa can both shade the head and parts of the neck and face from the sun, while loose fabric from the sides of the headgear can further shield the wearer from the grit of dust and wind. Beyond merely practical uses, hats are worn for cultural, moral, and religious reasons. Traditional women’s headgear in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity covered the hair and head for modesty’s sake. The Muslim woman’s hijab and the nun’s coif and veil are examples of religious headgear. Men, too, have easily recognizable hats associated with…

August 2012. The small town of Walnut offered a welcome respite from my long drive across Iowa on Interstate 80. Like many small towns in the Midwest, Walnut has struggled to survive. So the community reinvented itself as “Iowa’s Antique City,” with vintage memorabilia and antiques shops in dozens of old storefronts and barns. My mysterious handmade tatting-sample book emerged from a stack of textile patterns in an antiques barn. I could not resist it. The quiet, fragile sample book with thirty-seven pieces of finely crafted tatted lace raises many questions. I found its very existence as well as its survival a bit of a mystery—as is tatting to me because I am a knitter. What story might this tatting-sample book have to tell contemporary needleworkers? Sometime in the early…

The fashion transformation from chemise to camisole traveled a long historical road. During the Middle Ages, the chemise was basically an ankle-length smock with long, full sleeves. French for “shirt,” a chemise was an undergarment worn with a gown over it. Although undergarments have changed shape and sometimes function through the years, one thing remains the same: Undergarments are worn with another layer, or more than one, over them. Over time, the chemise became more like a slip—shorter, more closely fitted, and sleeveless. In the brief Edwardian era (1901–1910), the lace featured on the chemise at hems and necklines was worn exposed and visible for pleasurable feminine appeal and to display the beautiful lace artistry. Slips became separated from their lower skirts, or petticoats, and bodices and corsets enjoyed significance…

beg—begin(s); beginning BO—bind off CC—contrasting color ch—chain cir—circular cn—cable needle CO—cast on cont—continue(s); continuing dc—double crochet dec(s) (’d)—decrease(s); decreased; decreasing dpn—double-pointed needle(s) foll—follow(s); following hdc—half double crochet inc(s) (’d)—increase(s); increased; increasing k—knit k1b—knit 1 in back of stitch k1f&b—knit into the front and back of the same stitch—1 stitch increased k2b—knit 2 in back of next 2 stitches kwise—knitwise; as if to knit k2tog—knit 2 stitches together k3tog—knit 3 stitches together k5tog—knit 5 stitches together LLI—insert left needle into back of the stitch below stitch just knitted, knit this stitch lp(s)—loop(s) m(s)—marker(s) MC—main color M1—make one (increase) M1k—increase 1 by knitting into the front and then the back of the same stitch before slipping it off the left-hand needle M1p—increase 1 by purling into the front and then the back…

In the Footsteps of Sheep: Tales of a Journey through Scotland, Walking, Spinning, and Knitting Socks Debbie Zawinski Pittsville, Wisconsin: Schoolhouse Press, 2015. Softbound, 191 pages, $26.95. ISBN 978-0-942018-38-7. Kimono: The Art and Evolution of Japanese Fashion New York: Thames & Hudson, 2015. Hardbound, 320 pages, $80. ISBN 978-0-500-51802-1. Maya Threads: A Woven History of Chiapas Walter F. Morris Jr. and Carol Karasik Loveland, Colorado: Thrums, 2015. Softbound, 215 pages, $34.95. ISBN 978-0-9838860-6-8. New Lace Knitting: Designs for Wide Open Spaces Rosemary “Romi” Hill Fort Collins, Colorado: Interweave, 2015. Softbound, 168 pages, $24.99. ISBN 978-1-62033-753-0. Visit www.bit.ly/new-lace-knitting. Tatted Lace Accessories Donatella Ciotti Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England: Search Press, 2015. Softbound, 95 pages, $17.95. ISBN 978-1-78221-229-4. To learn more about the rich and ongoing tradition of various forms of needlework, we…

This fine crocheted baby bonnet was inspired by a photograph of an antique baby bonnet. Although only the top of the garment is visible, the photograph shows off a beautifully crafted filet-crochet rose band with looser netting behind it. Because creating the filet-crochet rose is such a time-consuming part of this project, I designed the bonnet to be created in parts. That way, if the bonnet is to be a gift, the crocheter can work the central panel ahead of time. After the birth, when the baby’s initials and birth date are known, the crocheter can create the two side panels, netting, and trim. The smaller panels are crocheted with the motifs turned sideways to make the gauge match the center panel. The bonnet shown is trimmed in a soft…

Frequent PieceWork contributor Galina Khmeleva came across the delicate vintage purse, shown above, made of fine real silver and gold or gold-colored threads in an antiques store on one of her many trips to teach Orenburg lace knitting. Even though the silver is now tarnished, one can tell that this purse—with its lacy fabric and fancy two-tone design—was made for special occasions. The dealer from whom Galina purchased the purse had no information about it. Because we know that handwork using real silver threads began to disappear near the end of the nineteenth century, this purse may well be more than a hundred years old. I have re-created the purse here, using readily available modern threads. MATERIALS Kreinik Metallic Thread Very Fine #4 Braid, 100% metallic polyester thread, 13 yards…

The pattern for this square scarf comes from Linda Elgas’s book Haapsalu rätikud [Haapsalu Scarves] published in 2001 with support from the Haapsalu Handicraft Society in Haapsalu, Estonia. This publication contains twenty unique patterns that Linda designed for square scarves. The introduction includes some history of knitting in Haapsalu, as well as general information about making Haapsalu scarves. The patterns are titled with the month and year that Linda finished each one. In Estonia’s “lace” language, a square or a triangle is called a “scarf”; a rectangle is called a “shawl.” The book devotes two pages to each pattern. The first page presents a chart of one quarter of the whole design—the lower right corner. The second page has an image of the completed scarf and a chart of the…