Anyone Else Read/Have DMC Encyclopedia of Needlework?

They appear to have intended to get twenty printings off that plate. (You can modify an offset plate by scraping stuff off, but you can't add anything without making a whole new plate.) There is a medallion on the dust jacket that says "SPECIAL COLLECTOR'S EDITION", but it carefully doesn't explain what is meant by that.

I also have _The Encyclopedia of Victorian Needlework_, which is Dover's reprint of S.F.A. Caulfeild's _Dictionary of Needlework_.

Haven't read either in ages.

(Just leafed through the chapter on applique'. Doesn't include what I consider the canonical method of turning under the edges of fine fabrics and securing them as inconspicuously as possible.)

And it's plain that the finished work is to be used for decoration only, and never, never washed.

You missed Chapter 2! (When I took down the book, it fell open to "Machine Sewing and Embroidery" -- only six pages out of seven hundred. And it included darning.)

The older I get, the more hand work I do -- possibly because I'm getting faster at it. And I'm extremely slow at machine work, so there isn't as much penalty.

If you want to top-stitch something that's going to fade, and don't want to use a contrast thread, hand sewing with ravelings that will fade the same as the fabric is the only option. I'm usually sewing silk when I resort to that, but I did it once where a flat-felled seam ran across the front of a linen shirt.

I do most of my darning when sitting around talking to people. Before I ran out of knitting (arrgh! I didn't wind off yarn for today's party, and all my remaining darning is the mind-on type!) darning mostly sat in the basket.

I darn only socks, so the choice is hand-darn or toss. All machine-knitted socks get tossed!

I lie. I once darned a white wool-challis scarf that I foolishly wore while burning trash and a spark burned a hole in it. Though I used sewing silk, and stitches usually show on white, you have to know the darn is there to see it. It was probably the only time I made a woven darn; I usually patch or toss cut-and-sewn garments.

I find duplicate-stitch darning an excellent methadone for Spider Solitaire, but I have to set it up ahead of time, and I'm out of socks that need that particular darn.

Joy Beeson

I do but more to the point there are some wonderful things in this book that are still traditionally done by hand. For example, as a Bobbin Lacemaker, I love the bits I've had time to look at related to bobbin lace. There is much more to this book than just the more mundane handwork like darning.

Thank you so much for posting the link to this

My darning basket sat sitting so long and so

:-)) I never do hems by machine, always by hand, so the mysteries of machine made hems will no doubt remain so.

Lacemaker, I

darning.

Mundane and busy work it may be, but good basic needle skills like darning are what help build one's technique for other types of hand embroidery. Do see your point though.

You're welcome. Spread it around as not everyone can find the book, nor has the room in their collection.

Oh my dear, hand hemstitching is streets ahead of all but the best machine made. We're speaking of the decorative sort, not merely finishing; though hand done hems I've seen on couture work are worth drooling over. Then again if anything I made was going to sell for the price of small house......

Candide

With kids including a 6 yo boy who is very hard on his clothes, I've switched to machine darning for just about everything, including socks.

--Betsy

One of the attachments for a Singer Featherweight is the darning ring, designed for darning socks.

For all the above reasons, machine darning must have seemed like a heaven many women, especially mothers.

Candide

My DH has developed a taste for serious athletic socks, and so far, I'll admit, they do outperform the "6 pair in a bag" I bought for so many years. But when a pair of socks costs nearly $20 each, and they get a wee hole or a thin spot, I get out the darning egg.

I collect old needlework books, and that one is one of my favourites. I think I need a newer less dog eared copy. I learned so much from it and I've tried a couple projects. True, I have a busy life, but I make time for needlework. I make hand sewing a priority in my life. I don't really darn anything, not with socks so cheap, but hand embroidery on a store bought blouse takes the ordinary and makes it special. I love hand embroidery, hem stitching, and bobbin lace. But, it's not like the ladies of one hundred years ago had it an easy life of leisure, we have dishwashers, automatic washers and dryers, electric ovens, electric and automatic everything and they didn't. I think they had far less time than we did. I do think they spent far less time driving from one place to another, and far less time watching TV or movies.

My other favourite is the Dictionary of Needlework. I remember looking through it while at a second hand book store. I clearly remember seeing the plates of Honiton lace for the first time. I very clearly remember reading on how lace braids were easily worked at home. The feeling I got reading and looking at those spectacular plates was comparable to how I felt when I met my hubby; I had discovered the needlework love of my life. I HAD to make that wonderful honiton lace for myself. I now make honiton lace, I now feel comfortable using 180 thread and making raised sewings and all those techniques that seemed so impossible when I first read the book and when I first tried it for myself. I've even tried a few of my own patterns, mostly Ontario wild flowers and mushrooms.

I think needlework is a worthy investment in time and effort. I had to give up something at some point in time; but what it was is lost in time as it obviously wasn't that important. And needlework is a cool thing to do while watching television, it engages my hands and mind while CSI or baseball or football is on.

Our "labor-saving" machines have actually created more work for us, rather than less. While it's true that using a washing machine and dryer is less strenuous than the way our ancestresses did their laundry, we do a great deal more laundry than they ever did. We also cook and prepare much fancier meals than they did. Vacuum cleaners are lovely, much nicer than brooms, but when you consider that they didn't have electric light and couldn't see a lot of the dirt that we see, they didn't hold themselves to the same standards we do. They didn't shampoo rugs, they hung them out and had the children beat them with carpet beaters. They also worked together, while we tend to work in isolation. Families were larger and there was usually a grandmother and/or sister to share the work, plus the children all had their chores.

It was not an easy life, I don't want to make it seem that it wasn't, but we have set such high standards for ourselves, that we don't have such easy lives either.

On the other hand, we (western families) live better than royalty did just a few generations ago: automobiles, electricity, plumbing, microwave ovens, facimille machines, steam irons, food supplies, telephones, televisions, embroidery machines, modern medicine, ....

I'm sure Queen X or King Y would have loved to zip around in a "self-contained personal transport system" while talking to his/her Prime Minister on a "personal communication system". ;-)

Beverly, always willing to see the bright side of life.

Indoor plumbing and central heat!!! I've spent time with relatives in places where indoor plumbing meant a pump at the kitchen sink as well as in the yard. I hated having to put on a full snow suit and boots just to go down the path to the outhouse where I had to take it all of, do my business, put it all back on and run back to the house. LOL!!

Drafty houses, heat coming from the stove or the fireplace meaning that only one side could be warm at a time.

No, I wouldn't trade my life for that. I don't even like camping!

Once again, proving we were twins separated at birth! I enjoyed Girl Scout camp when I was young, but my idea of a fun vacation today does not include cooking over a campfire or sleeping on the ground. My DH's family was very much in to camping, I think it's the one thing we were completely incompatible about.

Beverly

embroidery, hem

automatic

looking

baseball or

Well said! Also consider that not that long ago, indeed in many places not very long ago there wasn't so much ready made down at the shops (what few there were) for one to nip down and pick up. What little "ready made" there was, was expensive and thus only the very well off could afford. If you were keeping house out on some farm in Kansas, or up in the Appalachians, most everything that didn't come from the general store,or Sears catalo was run up at home.

Beautiful things like lace trimming and embroidery on garments, especially undergarments and baby's things, were usually all done up at home. Most women started knitting,crocheting, sewing and such for baby's layette soon as one knew one was in the family way. What wasn't made by herself, came from the woman's family and friends (for which she was expected to return the favour when their time came), or if she was lucky things that were passed down. Do remember reading in Godey's however, that much of the best stuff (handmade, and or hand embroidered), was for the first born, and the second usually got more machine and less hand, third, and subsequent children got totally machine made things,or what wasn't worn out by their siblings! *LOL*

We're not speaking of totally ancient history here either, well into the

I say like Susanne Sugarbaker; if God had wanted me to go off into the woods and live, he wouldn't have invented indoor plumbing! *LOL*

Remember watching "1900 House", and all those families queuing up to live the life of a proper Edwardian middle class family. No central heating, no central hot water, no indoor plumbing, gas lighting and the lot. The Bank of England doesn't have enough reserves to pay me to get on board with that idea! Now "Edwardian" as in lying about playing the grand piano and having tea parties, that I can do!

Candide

Candide

The only camp I ever attended was at Jumonville, the Methodist camp that had been a Civil War orphanage. As these things go, it turned out I had relatives who had been there in the orphanage days. There were buildings, dormitories, where we stayed, and a dining hall, classrooms, pool and tennis courts. It was affordable, too. I think I went for two years, but it was only a week-long camp, IIRC. A nice break from home, up in the mountains. It's much larger and more modern these days. I was driven through it on a sight-seeing tour when I was in Pennsylvania some 20 years ago. Not the same place at all. But it wasn't rustic when I went as a teen.

"KittenKaboodle" wrote in

I clearly remember seeing the

:-))))

So nice to know that there is another bobbin lace maker here.

Mind you, I've decided that I will ignore Honiton even though I did buy some bobbins to try it. I'm currently learning Milanese.