Barred Box Stitch

I was hoping to be getting on with my Dutch band sampler this weekend: it’s nearly finished at last. But I’ve got a stinking cold so I’m keeping the silk sampler safely out of harm’s way. Instead, here’s another stitch from the Mordvalaisten pukuja kuoseja book for you to experiment with. This one is a good line stitch, more solid than cross stitch. I’m calling it Barred Box Stitch as I don’t know its proper name. It’s a bit like that pencil and paper game of boxes.

It’s worked in two stages. The first stage is just a row of vertical lines. The second stage completes each box: top, diagonal and base line. It’s more-or less reversible, too. It can be worked on the diagonal, and in various sizes. It’s very straightforward as a line stitch, but working around corners does take a bit more planning and the occasional ‘fudge’ if you want to keep all the diagonal bars lying in the same direction.

The scrolling patterns on the sample are also taken from the same book. Here’s a chart for the pattern.  (Click to see full size.)

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Woven Diamond Stitch

Here’s another one of those interesting interlaced stitches from this book on the Internet Archive, Mordvalaisten Pukuja kuoseja, a book of old Mordvin costumes, embroidery patterns and stitches. This one is very similar to the Woven Circle Stitch from my first post about the book. It’s worked in much the same way, but the 8 points are spaced in a diamond shape. (I don’t know what the proper name for the stitch is, so I’ve called it Woven Diamond Stitch – does anyone know the proper name?)

Woven Circles and a Fascinating Book

If you read the comments under my previous post, you’ll see that Elizabeth gave us a link to a selection of patterns from an 1899 book about traditional Mordvin costumes, concentrating on the embroidery designs. (These are Eastern European costumes. I knew nothing about the Mordvin peoples before I saw this book, so I can do no better than point you at the Wikipedia entry for Mordvins.)

The whole book is on the Internet Archive, Mordvalaisten Pukuja kuoseja, and it’s fascinating. It has many, many pages full of embroidery designs, carefully charted on graph paper, and drawings of the embroidery in use on costume. A wonderful resource. The text is in Finnish and German, but the main part of the book is the plates.