A Successful Experiment

Firstly, to those who have been patiently waiting for a year: thank you. I found it very hard to concentrate for long during lockdown. I could manage a Facebook post, but WordPress felt too much effort.

Anyway, I am back for now. (I did finish the Mexican sampler in my previous post, and I hope to write about that in due course.) And then I virtually stopped stitching, as well as not writing the blog. In the last month or so, I have been making small pieces again. (“When all else fails, make a bookmark” is a motto that has stood me in good stead over the years.) After half a dozen or so bookmarks, I tried out this border pattern, loosely based on one in “Mordvalaisten Pukuja ja Kuoseja” by Alex O Heikel, a book from 1899 that is on Internet Archive. I have mentioned it many times before in this blog. I wanted to try the border in a fine thread as tone-on-tone to bring out the texture of the stitches and the play of light.

The main pattern, in double running, was very hard to get right. But after a lot of unpicking and many rude words, I got there.

Then it was on to the filling stitches. Those went rather faster, once I had found a good way of working. And the result was very pleasing to me. I was overwhelmed by the number of “likes” and comments on Facebook. I am keeping this piece as a sample, but I want to work it again at some point. Below, you will see the chart. Each line of the graph paper is one thread of the fabric.

The variegated cream colour of Gütermann Sulky Cotton 12 in colour 4001 worked beautifully on the cream shade of DMC 28 count Needlework Fabric.

(C) Sue Jones 2021

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Diamond Band Bookmark – another adaptation from Shorleyker

I adapted one of the designs from page H3 of A Schole-House for the Needle to make this bookmark. (If you have the book, it’s the fourth pattern band on the left-hand side.) The woodcut in the book could be interpreted in several ways – It was probably copied from a sample by someone who didn’t do counted-thread embroidery themselves – but I think it was almost certainly originally worked using counted satin stitch and a diagonal stitch – probably reversed faggoting or reversed double faggoting.

A Challenging Cushion

I’ve been busy.

The new job is going well, I’m pleased to say. I am settling in there nicely. On the embroidery front, the Second Yellow Mat is making good progress – it’s not far from finished now. It might even have been finished already except that I got sidetracked by another project… As one does. This project was figuring out an old crochet pattern on the Antique Pattern Library website. There was no actual pattern or any instructions: nothing but a hand-drawn illustration (probably a woodcut). You can see the printout I was working from in the picture below.

I had fun trying to  figure out how to stitch this. I can crochet, but I either follow a pattern or make up my own. Trying to figure out the pattern from a picture (which turned out to have a few minor inaccuracies) was quite a challenge.

But I rather relish a challenge like that. So with a lot of counting, trying-out, undoing, retrying and occasionally cursing, I did eventually figure the pattern out to my own satisfaction and produced the finished cushion front. And then came the equally tricky task of trying to turn my rough scribbles and scruffy notes into instructions that (I hope) will make sense to someone else. 

The finished instructions now have their own page on Tortoise Loft – the Blog: Crochet: Old Cartier-Bresson Crochet Square.

With the 4-ply cotton yarn I used, it was a very good size for a cushion. In a finer thread, it would make a handsome square for a bedspread, or something of that sort. I hope some people will have a go at working it. I also hope people will let me know if they spot any mistakes in the instructions, so I can make corrections.

I don’t intend to work out any other of the crochet patterns from these little booklets – one was enough! But I am very pleased with how well this one turned out.