Table of contents for July - August 2016 in PieceWork

I seriously cannot imagine traversing the country in a covered wagon. That so many intrepid people did just that, particularly in nineteenth-century America, is simply amazing. What is even more amazing, however, is that so many of the women who embarked on these adventures did so with as much style as they could muster. One striking image that captures this determination is depicted in the opening photograph of Mary Bush’s article “Making a Home on the Range and Elsewhere along the Pioneer Trail.” Mary relates, “The burden of civilizing the new territory fell mostly to women, who fulfilled the responsibility one tablecloth at a time. A black-and-white photograph in the archives of the Kansas State Historical Society supports this assertion. . . . [a] wife setting the table in preparation…

Pioneer life was hard enough without insects to complicate it. Preventing a pitcher filled with milk or another liquid from being fouled by pesky winged critters, not to mention airborne chaff and dirt sifting down from the ceiling of a sod roof or through the cracks in a log cabin’s walls, must have been a never-ending chore. Then—and today, too—a small piece of fabric draped over the top of a pitcher was enough to protect its contents. The fabric can be round or square, of any size, made from new fabric or old—a doily or a fragment salvaged from a tattered textile by cutting around tears and holes. Brighten the cover with embroidery or leave it unadorned. Weights sewn around the edges prevent this ingenious safeguard from sailing off in…

Whenever and however he began, needlework—crochet, knitting, needlepoint, and latch hook—was one expression of his lifelong habit of industriousness. My sister-in-law Donna asked, “Have you seen my lace tablecloth? My uncle made it for me.” Immediately intrigued, I shook my head—I hadn’t seen it. Her uncle, Bob Fry, had made and given the cloth to Donna when she graduated from high school in 1970; two years later, Donna used it during her wedding celebration. We wound our way through the kitchen and the stairway room and climbed the stairs to the attic of the old farmhouse, where she pulled the crocheted lace tablecloth from the chest where it had been stored. Countless hours had clearly gone into making the cloth. Such a table cover begins quickly and easily enough, but…

One of the things that first hooked Susan Boardman on embroidery, and on using embroidery to express her art, is history. “One of the reasons I chose embroidery as my medium is that my embroideries are inspired by women’s words. If you are going to do that, what better way than with a stitch?” she asks. So when she received her gray box containing the home-study kit from the Nantucket Needlery, it was the history of the stitch that captivated her. The kit was more than a “how-to” instructional. It went into the history and the “whys” behind each stitch it presented. “It just brought [embroidery] to me as an important part of the culture of the day and had me thinking beyond the thread to what life was like…

A favorite souvenir from Hungary is colorful hand-embroidered Kalocsa lace, which is available from most gift shops. Kalocsa lace was named for the very old city of Kalocsa, located in southern Hungary on the banks of the Danube. In addition to the needlework, Kalocsa is famous for its paprika, a necessary spice in Hungarian cooking, as well as for the folk-art-painted interior walls of Kalocsa houses. In the nineteenth century, most of the embroidery in Kalocsa featured floral motifs worked only with white thread and combined with Madeira or eyelet embroidery. In 1912, an embroidery-thread factory started to manufacture colored threads in the Hungarian village of Nagyatád. It now became possible to embroider the flowers in colors. The inspiration for the shapes and colors of the flowers often came from…

Let’s look at portions of the three patent applications, in the order of their filing, to discover the differences and similarities. Needle Woven Tapestry Mary Tillinghast The nature of this invention consists of weaving with a needle a pictured design into a suitable fabric by means of various colored silks or threads, in such a manner, that the design, when finished, shall present the appearance of being part of the original fabric. . . . It differs materially from all other work done by the needle in the fact that it causes the design to seem part of the material of the background. Art of Embroidering and Embroidery Candace Wheeler . . . the invention consists in passing the embroidering-threads under the warp and over the woof of the fabric,…

Customarily, mothers taught their daughters how to knit, embroider, spin, weave, sew, and crochet in preparation for marriage. This was especially true for farm wives. The daughter would then use her own needlework skills to create a trousseau and stock items in a hope chest. A hope chest, also known as a dowry chest or cedar chest, is a trunk used to collect special items for the future [see Diane Kennedy’s article, “The Hope Chest: The Gift That Starts a Home,” in this issue]. Clothing, handwoven tea towels, hand-embroidered linens, aprons, quilts, and other handcrafts might be some of the items. A farm wife’s existence was truly a life of devotion. She went from one chore to another with never an end in sight. Often, she was responsible for the…

Because much of Bob Fry’s fine lacework celebrated the weddings of his friends and family members, I wanted to create a project suitable for a bride. The design in this half-moon clutch borrows motifs from two sections of the tablecloth that Bob crocheted for his niece, Donna Fry: the outer geometric border and the flower at the center. The individual motifs that make up the bag’s center are simpler to crochet than the stunning interior blossoms of the tablecloth and much more forgiving if you make a small error in stitch counts. The same is true for the outer border, which has only a small number of predictable increases. I’ve used several techniques to modify the lace so it is strong enough for light use on a special-occasion handbag. In…

I love American folk art, especially rag rugs. These rugs have been popular in North America almost since the first European colonists arrived. Although they went out of general style after the nineteenth century, Mennonite and Amish women adopted rag-rug techniques from popular books and knitted rugs long after the craft had gone out of favor with the “English” or non-Amish. Amish knitted rugs are made with alternating strips of garter stitch and braids. Amish knitters combined sections knitted with lightweight fabrics (such as broadcloth from women’s blouses) with braids made from heavier cloth (such as denim from men’s work pants). Because garter ridges make a heavy, dense fabric, the thickness of the knitting was equal to the thickness of the braid, creating a sturdy rug. The simplest oval rugs…

Metal pins are an invaluable tool today, and they were no less so for sewers in the nineteenth century. And with pins came a variety of ways to store them, including boxes, cases, and, yes, pincushions. The first reference to a pincushion appears in the fifteenth century. Before that time, because metal pins were rare and expensive, they were kept in a variety of protective cases made of bone, ivory, or silver. The simple design of a white cotton crib counterpane in the collection of the Huron County Museum and Historic Gaol in Goderich, Ontario, Canada, instantly inspired me to re-create the delicate pattern in the much smaller form of a knitted pincushion. Counterpane block patterns do lend themselves to other uses as noted by Mrs. George Cupples in her…

Pen to Thread: 750+ Hand-Drawn Embroidery Designs to Inspire Your Stitches Sarah Watson Blue Ash, Ohio: Interweave, 2015. Softbound, 160 pages; includes CD, $26.99. ISBN 978-1-62033-952-7. Visit www.interweavestore.com/ pen-to-thread. Highland Knits: Knitwear Inspired by the Outlander Series Blue Ash, Ohio: Interweave, 2016. Softbound, 112 pages, $22.99. ISBN 978-1-63250-459-3. Visit www.interweavestore.com/highland-knits. Henry’s Hat Eric and Joanna Johnson Loveland, Colorado: Slate Falls Press, 2015. Hardbound, 46 pages, $19.95. ISBN 978-0-578-17224-8. Textiles of the Banjara: Cloth and Culture of a Wandering Tribe Charllotte Kwon and Tim McLaughlin New York: Thames & Hudson, 2016. Hardbound, 192 pages, $50. ISBN 978-0-500-51837-3. Vintage Details: A Fashion Sourcebook Jeffrey Mayer and Basia Szkutnicka San Francisco, California: Laurence King Publishing, 2016. Hardbound, 400 pages, $65. ISBN 978-1-78067-742-2.…

This seam is similar to the one used for reverse stockinette stitch. Place the pieces to be seamed on a table, right sides facing up. Beginning at the lower edge and working upward, use a threaded tapestry needle to catch the bottom loop of the edge stitch on the knit ridge on one piece, then the top loop of the edge stitch on the knit ridge of the other piece. Continue alternating from side to side, pulling the yarn in the direction of the seam, causing the loops from each side to merge into a continuous row of ridges. When the seam is complete, turn the work to the wrong side and work a single whipstitch over the seam allowance to secure the seam, then weave in the tail.…

Re-creating the Tidy Chair Back has been a most interesting and enjoyable adventure. Beginning as a chat about the historical needlework collection at the Huron County Museum and Historic Gaol, in Goderich, Ontario, Canada, the project evolved into re-creating one of these works—specifically, the Tidy Chair Back made in 1880 by six-year-old Ann Rath of East Wawanosh Township, near Belgrave, Ontario. The original was completed with fine crochet cotton and consists of a motif strip joined by a chain. After comparing test swatches to the original, I re-created it, using size 20 cotton thread and a size 7 (1.5 mm) steel crochet hook. While working on this piece, I couldn’t help imagining the life and circumstances of the little girl who crocheted the original. I am impressed by the quality…

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 dc3tog—double crochet 3 stitches together dec(s) (’d)—decrease(s); decreased; decreasing dpn—double-pointed needle(s) fsc—foundation single crochet 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…