This is from one of the modern books. I don’t think it has a name.
Today would have been my mother’s 92nd birthday. So today I’m showing one of the two things that I learned from her.
She did not have many of what used to be called “housewifely skills.” She couldn’t cook (she didn’t know this). She couldn’t sew (she didn’t know this, either). She made no pretense about knitting and crocheting. She recognized the difference between a crochet hook and a knitting needle, but I never knew her to actually touch either. Literally never.
Almost the whole scope of her mastery of “household arts” consisted of six embroidery stitches. She taught those six stitches to me before I was 5 years old. I got a lot of practice because, before I was old enough for school, someone (mom? grandma? Truly I was only 3 or 4) used to buy the little embroidery kits for children. They had a cardboard hoop, a square of white cloth already stamped, and dark blue floss. (Why always blue? Who knows?) I did my kits and then I did my sister’s kits. She’s another of those with a different skill set, not one that includes needlework. Or cooking.
This is one of my favorites. I think I just copied it from one I saw online. Once you have learned from the original books to work from pictures, you can copy old and new patterns at will.
And then, when I was 6, Mom took an hour or so to show me her other skill. She must have learned one pattern in high school, when it was taught in the homemaking classes in the 1930s and 1940s. It was called Swedish embroidery, for no known reason as it doesn’t seem to have any relationship with Sweden or embroidery. And the only pattern she knew was a partly remembered version of the basket. It wasn’t until I was grown and found the pattern in a book that I saw that she had the base of the basket and the handle but she had forgotten the lattice work part of the body. But it was enough for me to learn how to use the special huck toweling for weaving pictures.
There were no directions back then. You had a booklet with a small, muddy black-and-white photo, not quite in focus, of a finished design. The only instruction in the first booklet was an arrow pointing to “center of towel” and a note about how long the floss needed to be for each row. Then you had to squint at the picture to see how many stitches to make in what direction. People must have complained, because later books had an obscure notation telling where to make the next stitch, which you had to decode. I find it easier to just use the picture.
Back edge for the pink fans, below, using the three colors I used for the main design.
“Center of towel” was key. To make these, you take the required length of thread and start there, in the center. You use half of the thread, leaving the rest, to work across to the edge, Then you turn the work completely around and thread that tail on the needle, and work the other half of the design. I’m not going to give detailed directions here. There are about seventyzillion YouTube tutorials on this. I looked. Look for “Swedish embroidery” or “huck weaving.”
Pink fans. This is also one of Mildred Krieg’s designs.
In the spirit of “You kids today have it too easy!”, there are now pattern books with charts to go with the pictures, much enlarged and sometimes using a different color for each row. But you can still find the old booklets online, the original ones written by Mildred V. Krieg. They were ubiquitous in their day and they are available at a pretty reasonable cost even now. The first three are the ones I use most. The later ones have mostly monograms, which I just don’t do, although you might.
Materials: I use a size 22 tapestry needle. Those are available everywhere and cost a little over $1 for a package. Back when, people used embroidery floss, and many still do. You don’t separate the strands, so a needle threader can be your friend. I more often use #10 or #5 crochet cotton or pearl cotton. I almost never use variegated thread. The shading is from the way the stitches are made in any given row. But usually I do use more than one color for subsequent rows. You don’t use a hoop, either.
Fabric is a big deal, however. The patterns are specific for a type of fabric because the scale and proportions are different. Now you also find patterns specifying monks cloth that is wide enough to make a throw. But you have to use a pattern written specifically for your fabric or it will be distorted. Huck toweling is no longer readily available. I have found it online through the usual craft store (definitely not Hobby Lobby!). It’s 15 inches wide and you buy it by the yard. I bought a whole bolt, 50 yards, so now everyone I know has a supply of towels. I did find finished huck towels at the craft store, but dang! right where I would work the design, there was a strip of Aida cloth for counted cross stitch.
The fabric shrinks about 15% in length but not width (I have no idea why) so I cut it longer than I want the towel to be. I don’t recommend washing the fabric before working it. The sizing helps keep things straight and the floats on top, and the shrinkage after it’s finished helps secure the design thread into place. I usually do a folded and sewn hem, but many times people will pull a thread to give a straight line, do a double row of small machine zig-zag stitches, and fringe the edges. This holds up just fine. I’ve seen towels that were over 70 years old that had the fringe edge still looking good. And the design threads were firmly in place.
Back edge for the blue design.
So why use this huck toweling stuff? Well, it’s lint free. Originally it was ideal for drying glassware, back when dishes were always done by hand. If you’ve ever dried glasses with linty towels, you’ll understand. Now it’s also good for drying your hands after washing them to put in contacts. If you wear contacts, you’ll understand this, too. And it makes terrific guest towels or gifts.
Usually the main design is made on just one edge, the one that will be displayed when the towel is hung in the kitchen or bathroom. A very nice touch is to do a small related or simplified design on the other edge.
Back edge for the heart chain, above.
It takes two to five hours to do a complete towel, depending on the design size and complexity. Cost can be very minimal. I think I used a 50% off coupon (almost always available online if you don’t get their mailers) for the bolt, and since it wasn’t cut, the discount applied to the whole 50 yards. Floss is inexpensive, crochet thread even more so.
This is easy. Not just easy, but easy easy. Even my mom could do this. Yup, the mom who couldn’t sew on a button could do it.
Your turn. What’s in the works for you?