Boy! It really takes a lot of stitching to cover even a small space like 6 by 4 when you are using only a single strand of floss. I have been quite challenged to find ways to use the blanket/buttonhole in enough different ways to make an interesting piece that doesn’t rely solely on color changes to give it visual direction. I find that I have to leave more of the design area blank that i am used to, or comfortable with. Below is the practice cloth as it was last night. Tonight it is much more developed and with the addition of more areas comes more decisions. It is quite interesting to see what is resulting, even if i can;t say the piece is particularly
“artistic”………ggggg
I have been reading “Victorian Needlework, Techniques and Designs” edited by Flora Klickman.
Here’s the blurb from the inside front cover…
“This Dover edition, first published in 2002, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published in”The Home Art Series by the office of “the Girl’s Own Paper & Women’s Magazine, London,n.d. under the title “The Cult of the Needle”. edited by Flora Klickmann.
I love some of the pictures and for someone who knows nothing about making lace, i was able to visualize myself using some of the techniques shown. There are also included some descriptions of lace-types I have not seen mentioned elsewhere.
The best picture for me was the one that showed actual laying on of the braid for Brussels lace. However, the most delightful part of the the book is in Ms? Klickmann’s editorial comments.On page 58, her article”the Value of the Doll” is priceless for it’s glimpse into the mind-set of how to train young girls into the tedium(my word, not hers)of being fully responsible for and only interested in the running of a household. I can’t resist, here’s a small piece of it…….
“…………In this way you will not only be instilling in your child a love of housewifely things, and fostering the instinct for home-making that is born in most baby girls, but you will be teaching her the right way to do things, and what is required in a properly conducted household”
This is by no means the most startling(to modern ears) of the editorial comments of the author, but it was the shortest.
Sooooooooooo, while we are all adoring things Victorian, let’s remember, that some of the things that Victorian’s themselves loved required an emotional and mental servitude of women we ourselves could not begin to put up with. If I hadn;t understood as I was reading these passages what very real and continuing damage these ideas do to us, i would have been laughing.
