NeedleCrafts

Posted by Cyn

Grand­mother (Daddy’s mother) quilted exten­sively, leav­ing all of us with sev­eral lovely heir­looms. I regret that I never really learned to quilt. Aunt Mer­cedes is the only one car­ry­ing on that tra­di­tion as far as I know (I think she can do almost any­thing that involves sewing or paint­ing). Mama Sadie (Momma’s mother) cro­cheted, and I did try to learn how to do that. I never got past doing those sim­ple lit­tle chains that don’t require a hook. After attempt­ing to learn to knit years ago when I worked at Roderick’s Arts & Crafts (after-​​school job while I was in high school), I don’t think I’m fated to do any­thing with yarn but get it into tan­gles that amuse the cats. I’ve done can­dlewick­ing, needle­point, and sev­eral other kinds of hand­work but never liked any­thing else as much as counted thread work and beading.

Katie started “help­ing” me with me stitch­ing when she was tiny. I’d let her pull the thread through the fab­ric after I placed the nee­dle, and she was soon want­ing to do her own projects. She didn’t orig­i­nally like using pat­terns, but pre­ferred to work her own designs with­out even chart­ing them first. She still does that at times, but she chooses to use pat­terns from time to time.

Stitch­ing is one of those para­dox­i­cal activ­i­ties that can be both very soli­tary and very social. I would like to know other local stitch­ers or be part of a stitch­ing group, so I’ve started a mail­ing list for Atlanta Stitch­ers and listed the Atlanta shops I know of on the page for the list.

It’s a sur­prise to find any­thing that looks rea­son­ably orig­i­nal or well-​​done, and I often find myself mod­i­fy­ing designs to fit my needs or mak­ing my own graphs. Thanks to my sweetie, I am now the proud owner of a copy of Pat­tern­maker Pro and was even a beta tester for ver­sion 4.

Book Recomen­da­tions

You prob­a­bly didn’t expect to find rec­om­men­da­tions for mys­tery books ona page about needle­work, did you? I just had to men­tion two authors, though — espe­cially since I learned about their works in RCTN.

The first, Mon­ica Fer­ris, has three enjoy­able books out that are set in a needle­work shop, Crewel World, owned by Betsy Devon­shire. The first book is also called Crewel World and has a counted cross-​​stitch pat­tern related to the plot printed in the back of the book. Framed in Lace has a sec­ond cross-​​stitch pat­tern in it. There’s a needle­point pat­tern included in A Stitch in Time. The design in Unrav­eled Sleeve is some sort of counted work. You could prob­a­bly do just about any­thing with it. A Mur­der­ous Yarn includes a small pat­tern based on an antique car. I don’t have Hang­ing By a Thread yet, so I don’t know what kind of pat­tern it will have. I met Ms. Fer­ris a few years ago when Sam­pler Cot­tage hosted a book sign­ing, and she is every bit as delight­ful as her detective.

The hero­ine of Roberta Gel­lis’ novel A Mor­tal Bane is in some ways far removed from Betsy Devon­shire — she runs what is referred to by one char­ac­ter as “the most expen­sive brothel in Lon­don.” The busi­ness is reg­is­tered on the tax rolls of medieval Eng­land as a house of fine needle­work­ers, and the ladies do, in fact, design, stitch and sell var­i­ous pieces when they aren’t oth­er­wise occu­pied. I found the novel fas­ci­nat­ing, and it cer­tainly seemed true to the period (although I’m cer­tainly not an expert). The char­ac­ters were well-​​drawn and sym­pa­thetic, as well. I enjoyed the next books, A Per­sonal Devil and Bone of Con­tention too.

Permalink | June 17th, 2012

Leave a Reply