Hardanger Etui

I'm sorry I'm slowing down on posts. I have to get my camera out, and take some more pictures. I did find one picture in my files though, that I can talk about.


This is an etui (sewing box). The embroidered bands are to hold packets of needles and other notions, and the circle in the center is a pincushion for pins. The pattern for this etui is in "Fundamentals Made Fancy" by Janice Love. I was fortunate enough to take a Hardanger class with her (after I had made this) through my EGA guild, and I must say the class was more fun than the book, because Janice is very funny!


I was amazed by how little time this took to make. I really enjoyed it, and I think it is because the embroidery pieces are so (relatively) small. A large Hardanger mat or tablecloth can take months or even years, but this is like eating the center of Oreo cookies, you get to do the fun stitches without having to plow through the miles of Kloster blocks. The centers were so much fun! A couple of the names were "Greek Cross" and "Edelweis" and then there were tons of "Dove's eyes" and picots. The lacey edging didn't even take that long.




The instructions were very clear for assembling the box and it turned out beautiful. My biggest regret is that the moire satin has faded badly on the outside, and has turned into a completely different color. I'll get a picture of that, too, when I get my camera out.

Smocked dress

I made a smocked dress for C for her baptism last year. She and P were baptized at the same time. This is a picture of her and mommy afterwards (waiting for the party to start). She looked like a princess in it. The faces are the most beautiful things in this picture, so I will show a picture of the dress by itself so you can see it.




The fabric was a shimmery organdy over a cotton lining; the sleeves were just the organdy and lace. The smocking was white on white in a trellis pattern with 3 little bullion roses at the bottom.


The roses should show up a little bit better in this picture. This was a Vogue pattern, and the detailing on it was beautiful; there are no unfinished seams on the inside or any fraying fabric. (Very unusual, for me, for a home-made garment.) It was also done in plenty of time, and fit beautifully. I enjoyed making it also, with the sewing machine set up on the dining room table, and walking to my easy chair for all the detailed hand-work.



This is a picture of the family present at the grand occasion. We are missing the aunts and uncles from this picture. My father (also known as Opa) is a retired pastor, and he did the honors at the baptism.



This picture is: back row: DH, me, mom, and daddy holding C.
front row: Oma, Opa, and Meme holding P.

Drawn Work

I just purchased 8 pair (!) of drawn work pillow cases, plus an additional pillow case, napkin and sheet. Most of the drawn work is the same pattern. The price was so reasonable I will be able to use them for every day! Plus, I will have some as gifts. These were from an estate sale. There was also embroidery from this sale; I will hopefully get to see some of that next week.

Arpillera from Peru

I mentioned that when we were on vacation in Michigan we spent a day in Saugatuck. We had a very nice time. There's a nice little downtown with cute shops right by the channel. The weather was gorgeous, the company was excellent, and we just had a good time.

I found a shop that carried "fair trade" items; and I get excited when I see one of those, because I know you can find things from around the world, and usually some in textiles. Once I went in the store, I was thrilled, because they had a lot of textiles. I found this Arpillera from Peru there. My budget determined the size I could get, but there were wonderful examples there, a rain forest, a garden, a market, an undersea scene, etc. (I'm not sure there were all of these in the shop, I've been browsing on-line as well.)




I chose the village scene for my granddaughter's sake. I wanted her to look at it, and she is crazy about animals, so this is the one I got. P & C were intrigued by the pink pigs, and they both liked the knitted hats. Most of the animals are fuzzy, so it was nice to feel them, as well. It is signed, and the store owner told me if I wanted to I could communicate through the web-page and find out exactly the artist that made it.

I like this piece so much that I'm planning to add another arpillera someday, when I can afford it. There is a "Tree of Life" that is cool, and a nativity scene with all the animals that pops off the page.



This is a picture of the little park along the channel. There were small parks scattered throughout the shopping area. We had lunch in a pub type restaurant. The sweet potato fries were wonderful. My mom wasn't walking very well (she's doing much better now) so we didn't get to many of the stores. DH and I are hoping to go back and check out more of the town.

Dutch Sampler

Today I want to talk about my "non-antique" Dutch sampler. My first acquaintance with this sampler was when my aunt S. gave an example of it to my grandparents, probably when I was in high school. I loved that sampler! but I knew that, in the normal course of things, I would not inherit it, since it came from another branch of the family.



When I was working, after college, a co-worker had scheduled a trip to Holland to visit family. I showed her a picture of the sampler, and asked if she could look for something similar for me to stitch. She was very happy to have a "treasure" to hunt for during shopping trips. She could find nothing like it in the shops, but discovered the exact pattern in a magazine stashed in a drawer in her mother's home. When she returned, she brought me a copy of the pattern! I was thrilled.

The colors listed in the pattern had numbers next to them... and I didn't know what they meant. I discovered they were DMC numbers, and I would be able to stitch the sampler in the exact same colors as my grandparents'. I thought that was a marvelous idea, to number your colors so you could match them exactly. That fact will give you a little insight as to when this saga took place; the date stitched on my copy of the sampler is 1979. I think it is the first thing I ever stitched on linen.

The stitching itself was a joy. The pattern was clear, the motif style made it easy to follow, and to see the sampler come to life under my hands was amazing.

Last year when I posted a picture of this sampler on my Flickr page, a friend from a class I was taking, Ati from Norway, told me the name of the designer, and sent me another sampler design by the same person. I never dreamed, the first time I saw this sampler, that I would ever be able to stitch it, and even less, that I would ever be able to find another pattern by the same designer. I love living in this day and age!

Noah's Ark

I made this wall hanging for my first daughter. At the time (late 1970s) the nursery was decorated with gold, orange and brown tigers, and this fitted the theme very nicely. It is stitched on Aida cloth from an Eva Rosenstand pattern. It was a huge pattern for me at the time, but it went quickly, as I recall, since there are not a lot of color changes, and very little back stitching. I sewed a backing fabric on it (an uncut corduroy) and just slipped adjustable curtain rods into openings on the top and the bottom; and mounted hangers on the wall far enough apart to put the piece under a slight tension. It hung smoothly for many years. Now of course, it is folded in the drawer and only comes out for command performances like this one.



There are tigers, zebras, elephants, monkeys, hippos, giraffes, turtles, and camels, a lion, a rhino, a koala, a mouse, a rabbit, and a lamb along with Noah.

I'm very glad to have this, but I would never pick it again, my tastes have changed so much. It seems so plain, and it is one of the few things I have stitched on Aida.

Antique Doll

There has been quite a bit of conversation about this doll on one of my groups, so I thought I would talk about it here. This is a Lanarte Kit (from Denmark, I think) that I stitched while I was pregnant with my second daughter in 1981. I got it at Penelope Tree, a needlework shop in Munster, Indiana, that had beautiful kits. They have been gone for at least 10 years. It was over $80; and at the time my needlework budget was what I could save in a 5 gallon glass jug. It took more than 6 months to save up for it. My dear husband would have been willing for me to use household funds, but I could not justify that to myself.

I didn't know at the time if I was having a girl or a boy, but planned to give this to the child I was carrying if it was a girl, and to my first daughter if it was a boy, and then he could have the "Noah's Ark" that I had already stitched for her. (I will post that one next.) C. will proudly tell you that this item belongs to her, however the sampler still lives with me for the time being, since the frame broke a couple of years ago. I should probably start saving pennies again to replace the frame.



It took some time to finish (I want to think 3 years... I had to get my money's worth), and I knew who it would belong to before it was finished. I almost ran out of one color floss. I thought it was DMC floss, but I couldn't find an exact match for it. The replacement was close enough, though, so that no one could tell it wasn't the original. The part of the skirt (and sleeves) that look like a brocade ribbon appliqued and the bullion lace is almost stiff with the stitching and the metallic fiber. I'm pretty sure that was the DMC metallic that comes on the spool. As I recall, I stitched it in hand.

I entered it into a needlework exhibit in Munster a short time after I had completed it, and it won the Viewer's Choice Blue Ribbon. Mine was one of three, but one of them had been stitched with one strand (I used two, according to the instructions), and the other had left off the backstitched background.