A Bluestocking Knits

Counted Stitch, Needlework, Samplers

Page 7

Published by

Bluestocking

on

11th August 2021

Page seven of the nine-page chart for the "Quaker Virtues" sampler. I had been feeling for a while that the border would look more finished with two lines of stitches instead of one, so I went back to the other side and have begun adding in another line. I'm quite content with my rather agonized choice of three shades of Antique Blue — blue and white china being always pleasing to my eye — which makes the eternity that this thing is taking into a journey, not an arrival-to-be (!). Laura — who to my astonishment and delight has decided after working a set of small cross-stitch pictures that she actually likes this hobby — frequently asks me, "How far along are you now?" and I sigh and say, "Not halfway yet," but I think I've passed that mark without even noticing, since page 4, the one above what I've just finished, is in fact the only remaining full-page of the chart, and the rest are all partial pages.
Counted Stitch, Samplers

The State of the Counted Stitch

Published by

Bluestocking

on

5th July 2021

Darlene O'Steen's little "Honeysuckle Sampler," which I couldn't resist starting. I suspect, judging from the thoroughness of her book as well as knowing that she taught numerous seminars in North America and the UK, that she would be delighted that I am learning new things with this first sampler, including that this is properly called "counted stitch" since not all of them are "crossed," that is Xs. There are a number of stitches that I have not worked before — Irish stitch, queen, rice, and double herringbone certainly.

The Irish stitch is fun, and makes a lovely touchably-satin-like surface, as well as these rather dramatic "flames". Queen stitch is my least-favorite, as it is not a simple thing to get the diamond to be consistently flat, or the little couching stitches across its middle to line up neatly, and more vexingly, it's an utter pain to pick out when it goes wrong. Unfortunately, there is quite a lot of queen stitch in this sampler — all of the blue flowers in the border, and as a filler for the box across from the Irish stitch one! And I discovered that I must pick out that errant gold diamond in the upper corner …

Oh well — I'm still very happy with it, and with the color palette, which manages to be both rather brilliant and gently-faded at the same time.

The calm blues and whites of the "Quaker Virtues" sampler. I have turned the second corner of the border, and am filling in and up to meet the already-worked area. I'm pretty sure there are indeed variations in dye lots between the dozen or so skeins of DMC 931 that I've used so far, but as I'm alternating between three or four skeins at a time as I go, I find that, when you notice it at all, it has a pleasing overdyed mottling to it rather than a jarring "edge".

Some beautifully-cut pieces of poplar picture-frame molding, for "Froth and Bubble," "Peace to My Friend," and "Anna Ohman" — the last is already stained and coated with beeswax and linseed oil.

And five pieces of home-dyed linen, waiting to become Ellen Chester's little "Quaker Samplings" series …!
Family, Quilting

Night Light

Published by

Bluestocking

on

21st June 2021

"Night Light" quilt, designed by Joy Hoffman (the pattern seems to be more-easily found under its original title of "Shimmer"). I used fabrics from Pam Buda's "Forevermore" and Jeanne Horton's "Country Soiree" collections, augmented by a blue and cream print I had in my stash, and Kona Cotton solids in Delft and Cadet blues, and Bone for the solid stars. It was both a challenge and fun to make, sometimes both together, and after I settled into a rhythm, I quite enjoyed my first experience of hand-quilting (which is a simple outline of the stars and along-the-seams).

I think if I were to make this again — and I wouldn't write off that possibility — I would be daring enough to try working out how to make that set of star points that uses a pair of half-rectangle triangles with one piece of the patterned fabric, so that there isn't a seam through the middle of it. I almost wish that the smaller stars were "wonky" too …
Counted Stitch, Quilting, Samplers

Experimenting PS (!)

Published by

Bluestocking

on

18th June 2021

I had the niggling feeling that there was some "experimenting" that I was leaving out of yesterday's post, and this morning I remembered two things.

Some time ago I bought a copy of Diana Boston's The Patchworks of Lucy Boston, and admired the quilts — of course — but put aside the thought of paper piecing as just too labor-intensive. Imagine my amused contrition when not long ago I browsed through the book again and thought, "You know, self, I think I'd like to try that after all …." It was partly the capability of using "oddly-shaped" pieces that aren't particularly easy to do when machine-piecing (though "odd shapes" aren't usually something that appeals to me), but more just the intrinsically-pleasing effect of Mrs. Boston's quilts that spoke to me, as well as the pleasure that I am taking more and more in "slow" needlework. You can't really do this kind of quilting by machine. And so I ordered a small stash of paper shapes, deciding to start with a simple table runner using some William Morris fabric reprints I bought years ago.

This kind of paper-piecing really is as labor-intensive as it sounds — you have to baste the fabric to the paper shape, stitch two basted shapes together, then add more shapes one at a time, all by hand — though it is more the tedious kind of intensiveness, not the exhausting kind. I must admit, though, that I'm very impressed with the tidiness of the results — the intersections where my four tumbler blocks meet are pretty much perfect, even from a novice such as myself! So we will see how it goes …

There are varying opinions about whether it's okay to dye fabric with coffee and/or tea — the thought is that the acids in coffee and tea will eventually degrade the fibers in the fabric, and popular knowledge says specifically that tea-dyed cotton will begin to degrade in 30 to 40 years, and coffee-dyed in 75 to 100 years. On the other hand, some dyers such as R&R Reproductions say that it isn't a problem, that "the acid content in coffee and espresso specifically] has been tested and approved by museums all over the U.S." Of course, "degrading" is not only subjective in itself — is that a bit of fuzz here and there, or does the whole thing just dissolve into a mass of loose fibers?! — but much I'm sure depends on the conditions in which the fabric is kept — framed (under glass or not), acid-free storage or not, etc. etc. etc. Anyway, I thought I'd try it on some fabrics intended for samplers and see what the results look like.

This is Cashel cotton on the left and linen at the bottom, both from Zweigart (with its distinctive red selvedge). Both were dyed in the same batch of cold brew made with Seattle's Best house blend, though with slightly different methods and times, so it was interesting to see that although the linen was in the coffee bath for about a half-hour it is darker than the cotton, which soaked for at least ninety minutes! Both are a fairly unexceptional ecru in real life, so I suspect that in future I will leave the dyeing to the professionals or at least the more-dedicated-to-it than I!
Books and Reading, In the Garden, Quilting, Shawls and Scarves

Experimenting

Published by

Bluestocking

on

17th June 2021

Well, we might be heading at what feels these days like breakneck speed towards normality, what with now-readily-available vaccinations here in California, but I am still stress-crafting, clearly. I rarely have less than a half-dozen things going at once, some of them new to me or mostly-new. Some are things that I've been thinking about for a while, others are admittedly impulsive but no less fascinating.

These two skeins of yarn have been sitting on my dresser since Christmas, caressed now and then while I pondered what to make with them. I was amused to see the differences in the look of this yarn from skein to ball to knitted fabric — it is "Gluttony Sock" superwash merino/nylond blend from Forbidden Fiber Co. in the "When Presents Explode" colorway. I have no idea what these colors have to do with exploding presents, but there it is.

It is now becoming a modified "Camptown Races" cowl — "modified" because I don't need to change colors, of course!

This is the first time I have encountered "print on demand" fabrics — it's a bit disconcerting, to be honest, but one must move with the times I suppose, at least occasionally. This particular selection, from Spoonflower, came out a bit more turquoise than I was expecting, but I was certainly looking for midcentury-modern prints, that is true. I like them all, but the two on the far left at least are too big for the quilt I have in mind, so that the design would get lost. I'm definitely interested in the three on the right, but will have to see how they work with screen-printed fabrics, as the feel is noticeably different.

David built two more "Victory Garden" beds this spring, in the patch of sunlight made by cutting down an old tree (both decrepit and vile) in our backyard, and I planted them with vegetables, and at the recent tomato sale at our local arboretum, managed to score five young tomato plants, now residing in our sunny front garden. This one is "Uluru Ochre". I haven't had much luck with tomatoes in previous years, thanks to an inordinate amount of suburban wild- and semi-wildlife, but we're trying some (non-chemical, of course) methods of protection, so we'll see how it goes!

The Furrowed Middlebrow imprint of Dean Street Press has just reissued a spate of previously-long-out-of-print Molly Clavering books from the 1930s. I splurged on three of them, since I had enjoyed Mrs. Lorimer's Quiet Summer and perhaps even more, Near Neighbours (which was a few years ago reprinted by Greyladies, alas now gone from their catalog, though I believe some copies are still available from Anglophile Books). These new editions themselves are handsomely put-together with covers featuring details from artwork contemporary-ish to the novels — my only quibble is that, since the text has been re-set, presumably to conserve space, the gutters are very narrow, meaning that to actually read the book puts the reader at risk of breaking the spine, certainly of distorting the covers. But it's what's inside that counts the most, of course — so I'm off to read for a bit —
“Knitting with D.E. Stevenson”, Books and Reading

Reading Days

Published by

Bluestocking

on

30th May 2021

Susannah Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell was a strange and wonderful delight of a book, that as massive as it is I did not want to end but for that if it didn't I would never know what happened. Her new book is different, and yet the same in that it seems be of a world in which time moves differently.

To my surprise, I don't think I'd ever read this — Ancient Egypt and Agatha Christie! It should come as no surprise that both the mystery and the setting are well-done. The reading is also excellent, by Emilia Fox, who deftly conveys the different characters with individual voices and in some cases accents, that are natural and clear.

Read by the lovely Juliet Stevenson. I suppose the only "problem" with this edition, other than the dislocation of picturing Mrs. Elton telling Emma's story (!), is that it is too short. Did I know that it was abridged when I bought it? I don't remember!

An old favorite, as delightful the umpteenth time as it was the first!

Again, I was looking for old friends, so found myself dipping into this, a few entries before bed. She sounds very young in 1915. I'm glad I have the Hogarth edition instead of the simple but rather dull American one — the jacket illustration just seems to fit so much better.

For something completely different, an old paperback copy of one of Peters' "other" series heroines (not Amelia Peabody, I mean!). Her writing is a bit pedestrian at times, perhaps, but you read it for the madcap adventures, really, and the almost ever-present archaeology!

To my pleasant surprise, I found when starting this for the DES list discussion recently, that I had not read it before! It is noticeably more cheerful than the book it follows (Amberwell of 1955), which made it all the more pleasing for me to read, wanting some "comfort books" lately!

And for my "Knitting With D.E. Stevenson" virtual knitalong, here is a Shetland-type shawl from Patons Australia of an undated but pre-decimal vintage at least, free, written out and re-charted in modern terms. To say more about its presence in the story would give away a plot point, so I won't!

I haven't listened to LibriVox recordings before, but am delving into various options while access to the public library is limited. I had a hankering for some "Golden Age" mysteries, so chose this one from 1908 (!). It's a bit disconcerting to find that different readers have recorded different chapters, apparently at random — I was quite startled to hear, in an American novel set in a small East-Coast village with moneyed summer homes, the "maiden aunt narrator" suddenly cry out in broad Glaswegian tones, and male ones to boot, "'Och, Halsey, whaur ha'e ye bean?!'" But I find it satisfying to knit or stitch while listening to an audio-book, so shall just remark on the absurdity and carry on!
Historical Knitting, Shawls and Scarves

Knitting Days

Published by

Bluestocking

on

22nd May 2021

Because there is still some knitting going on chez Bluestocking …

It will shortly be Miss Watts's "Figured Comforter" Mark 2, though, as the first one, while handsome, is far too small. Miss Watts unfortunately gives no indication of what weight of wool, so I picked a rather fine one — too fine, obviously. But I like the pattern stitch, so re-making it is not an effort.

This is FibraNatura's "Shepherd's Own", formerly in its natural cream color, dyed multiple times with Kool-Aid until I got a red that I liked — unfortunately it took so very many times that I nearly despaired and now I've forgotten which colors I used. I'm quite pleased with the three skeins above, though a bit puzzled by the marling (marled-ness??) of the one on the left below, and the certainly-not-100%-natural-wool intrusion in the one on the right. I think I can pick it out without ill effect, though …
Quilting, Sewing

Sewing Days

Published by

Bluestocking

on

21st May 2021

Now that Laura's quilt is finished, I've picked up the one that was for me, a simple half-square triangles in a selection of rather soft colors, not quite Georgian but nearly. I have been taken for some years with the quilt in a scene from one of my favorite Jane Austen movies, the 1995 "Persuasion," that little scene where Anne, having just met Captain Wentworth again seven years after she turned him down, is sitting on her bed cut to the quick after hearing that he had said she was so altered he would hardly have known her. The scene is almost heart-breaking, with Amanda Root's little gesture of touching her face, seven years older, tired and worn-out by her heartless family — but indeed, I have also noticed the quilt on the bed, a simple thing of patterned triangles alternating with cream ones. Mine now is even simpler, with its half-square triangles — and one in Anne's day would no doubt have been paper-pieced instead — but I shall call this "Persuasion I" nevertheless. I've got most of the rows sewn, and some of the rows sewn in pairs — a fairly simple matter, so pleasantly day-dreamy.

David has become very intrigued by hemp fabric, its ecological soundness, and so we bought some pieces and samples from Hemp Traders in Los Angeles — this is their H-P4 hemp linen (4.6 oz.). I was thinking that I'd make a shirt for him, though when the fabric arrived I remembered why I dread sewing with linen fabric — I love the feel and look of good linen, but it's so slippery and wiggly that I feel hopeless at even cutting it, let alone sewing it — so I made a pillowcase. I made up for my cowardice by sewing the hem with the newly-discovered triple zig-zag stitch on my 1980s machine. On the bright side, the pillowcase is very nice, and already softening up with laundering. I think I will get some linen/cotton blend for that shirt …

For a long time, I've kept my sewing threads in one of those plastic spindle boxes, which has vexed me the whole time for not being able to accommodate different sizes of spools. The photo on the box looks so organized with all of those slim Gütermann spools, but I have the fatter Gütermanns too, not to mention the Coats ones and assorted oddities. If I put one of the larger spools on a spindle, then at least four of the spindles next to it can't be used, which is remarkably inefficient for a thread storage box. One day last summer, as I shifted things around yet again to accommodate a new spool, a thought slowly dawned on me that a storage rack like a kitchen spice drawer insert would be just the thing — it could accommodate different sizes of spools, which if you got a new spool would simply slide over to make room for the new one.

He fiddled around in the garage for a while and came up with a prototype, fiddled some more after consultations, then came up with this, which fits in one of the drawers in our tall Chinese chest-of-drawers, home of my yarn stash. There is a little lip at the front of each tier to keep the spools in place, and the tiers are tilted at just the angle to get both maximum visibility and maximum capacity.

It gives me a very librarian-ish pleasure, I must say, to open the drawer and see the neat rows!
Books and Reading, Counted Stitch, Historical Knitting, Miniature Needlework, Samplers, Shawls and Scarves

Page 8

Published by

Bluestocking

on

15th May 2021

Finished page 8 of the "Quaker Virtues" sampler this morning! The line runs down the center of that big motif just below "SIMPLICITY", with the top of the page through the word itself — which isn't crooked, I assure you, the fabric is just a little stretched there! I'm finding a rather surprising number of mistakes in the chart, and not just subjective things like spacing (which I admit to having tweaked here and there), but missing or extra stitches, one of which took me quite a bit of picking-out to fix, since the error was near where I started the particular motif, and I didn't realize it until I got to the next cardinal point. Oh well. I'm still enjoying the piece immensely!

Being so very near to finishing Laura's quilt (!), I felt justified the other day in starting a small knitting project (!!) — having had a conversation with Brittany by way of the comments about Stephen Maturin's comforter, I thought, "well, I must have some suitable wool, let's just see what one of these 'comforters' looks like, eh?" This one will be the "Figured Comforter" from the 1840 edition of Miss Watts's 1837 book — about twenty-five years after the events of Desolation Island, but presumably things didn't change overmuch between. This particular comforter's shape will narrow a bit where it rests at the back of the wearer's neck, then widen out again at the other end. (I was a bit concerned at first that it wasn't going to lie flat, but once it got a bit of heft behind it, as it were, it settled down nicely.)

This miniature sampler was finished some weeks ago, and again I put off making the frame, had trouble with same, etc. etc. etc. The chart is the "Heritage VI" by Annelle Ferguson — I lightened all of the colors by one step, which result usually pleases me very much though in this case I suspect wasn't quite successful, but there it is. I had great difficulty getting the picture-frame molding mitered properly, so rather than keep wasting it I ended up using plain strip wood (this is 1/8 x 1/4") and "scratch carving" a simple line around the opening to make it look like a home-made frame. This didn't turn out too badly — it looks old-ish, at any rate!

I have been reading quite a lot — I keep meaning to write about that, then find myself absorbed in yet another book —
Family, Quilting

“Oarweeds, Devil’s Aprons, Sea Tangles”

Published by

Bluestocking

on

12th April 2021

"Giant Kelp Forest" by NOAA Office of Response and Restoration on Flickr (Attribution 2.0 Generic [CC BY 2.0])

I must admit that the idea of a kelp-forest quilt is strangely intriguing. Julia has a serious interest in sheep, of course, but when I asked her about the other, she said, unexpectedly dreamily, "I would live in a kelp forest if I could."

(The title of this post comes from Rachel Carson's The Edge of the Sea: "In the lowest pools the Laminarias begin to appear, called variously the oarweeds, devil’s aprons, sea tangles, and kelps. The Laminarias belong to the brown algae, which flourish in the dimness of deep waters and polar seas…. To look into such a pool is to behold a dark forest, its foliage like the leaves of palm trees, the heavy stalks of the kelps also curiously like the trunks of palms…. One of these laminarian holdfasts is something like the roots of a forest tree, branching out, dividing, subdividing, in its very complexity a measure of the great seas that roar over this planet.")

"Kelp Forest at Monterey Bay Aquarium" by Vadim Kurland on Flickr (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0])

The top photo is actually fairly close to what I saw in my mind's eye at the thought of "kelp forest quilt", just sideways thus —

There is an intriguing tutorial on piecing curvy strips from Kathleen Loomis here — and the other day I bought the pattern for a "Color Work Table Runner" by Jean Wells that on the kelp-forest-quilt scale comes about halfway between basic "wonky strips" and Loomis's free-wheelers.

But I have to admit that the idea of piecing all of those curves — because they'd have to be lengthwise, wouldn't they! — on a full-sized twin bed quilt makes my heart sink to my boots. There is also Purl Soho's "Prism" free pattern, say done in a combination of kelp-y batiks and ocean-y solids …