Memoral Day Dishtowel

Suddenly Memorial day has arrived; I think this may be the earliest it can be in a month?

Lois embroidered this dishtowel and it is perfect!

May we remember all those who have given their lives that we may be free. May we remember we will not stay free if we don't continue the fight.

When we allow our government to tell us what we can or can not say, we have lost freedom. When our country no longer does what it could to provide for itself, we have given up too much; when we no longer progress technologically, we are not rising to the challenge and winning; when only one side of any issue is all you can find in the national newspapers or on main TV news, warning lights should go off in our head.

For those reasons and more, the fireworks on the dishtowel seem more like warning lights.

Embroidered Dishtowel

Lois finds a more modern pattern for her dishtowels. The coffee theme is really big right now, as well as the coffee colors. Isn't it fun when you can take a wonderful hobby and update it!

Hardanger Lace

Hardanger lace embroidery is prized for its beauty, elegance and ability to enliven a plain piece of good quality fabric. Hardanger embroidery originated in a small town of the same name in Norway, where it continues to be made to this day. Hardanger lace spread to Italy, Germany and other European countries before being introduced to the United Stars in May 1901, according to the editor of The Lace Maker in an article in The Ladies' Home Journal.

You must work with fabric which has an even weave both directions. Using a blunt needle, you count carefully while creating the satin stitch, over-and-under bars, eyelet stitch, back stitch, lace stitch, or fagoting stitches using thread you never knot. Here you see the final project where Zella has stitched around the edge with her sewing machine so the edge never frays.

Pillowcase Doll

Do you have an embroidered pillowcase you would like to show off? Why not make a doll with your pillowcase and let the beautiful embroidery live again!

I was married over 40 years ago. Most of my wedding shower gifts were hand embroidered pillowcases. Maybe it is time to go back to that drawer and see what else could be done with all that beautiful hand work.

Embroidered Dish Towel

Will use this as my post before this photo is too 'separated' from the other dishtowel posting. You will remember the story of my Mom getting cataracts and wearing tinted glasses - thus she could not see the thread colors. This set of the "Days of The Week" included those small errors she never would have made in her younger days. They are not imperfections to me - they are part of the story of her life.

Oh how she loved the 'Days of The Week'. For a long time, a pattern had to have those words or they just were not right for dish towels. How about you? What is your favorite dish towel pattern?

Embroidered

I never received dish towels from Mom when she was young. In those days the flour came in flour sacks. Well, she made a lot of bread for 10 kids so she did go through a few flour sacks! They were always bleached and made into dish towels. I remember the confusion when the flour sacks arrived printed. Why the change? Why the upset? The dish towel source was gone and she had to resort to buying fabric just for the dish towels. (Now the print flower bags did not go to waste. They became little dresses or aprons.) Eventually flour sacks became paper sacks as they are today.

As the years went on, Mom continued to embroider dish towels, but her tinted glasses and cataracts confused the colors of the thread. It took me a few months to figure out what was going on and most of the towels I own are from that era.

I don't want to use them. I want to touch them. I want to remember who made them. I smile at the mixed thread colors knowing she is in heaven looking at them with her hands on her hip just shacking her head. She's wondering how in the world did that happen. :)

Embroidered Pillow

Embroidery has never been my thing. Somehow you have to hold the tension of the thread just right as you pull it in and out of a piece of cloth that also must be held with just the right tension. It seems to me that just too much tension regulation is involved for this to ever work correctly. The harder you try, the tighter the tension - trouble.

Some people, however, can regulate all that without any problem and embroider away as though they were not even thinking. My stress begins when I have to think about the colors - the right shade of green for the leaves when you have decided the flowers should be pink. What color family is everything? Then you need still another shade of those color for outlines. A person could have a stroke just trying to put the right colors together.

Have I mentioned yet that you need an embroidery hoop? Special embroidery thread? Needles with the correct size of eye? Patterns, material? It also helps if your know all your different stitches - running stitch, ribbon stitch, back stitch, leaf stitch, Vandyke stitch, french knots - you get the picture.

Is anyone having fun yet? LOL Once again I win! This was a gift! My mother made it almost thirty years ago. I loved it then. I love it more now.