- History continued: Marking stitch and even weaving

Linen napkin made in 1983 for my parents' 30th wedding anniversary

Long ago (in the 1980s) and faraway (in Virginia) I spent some time as the Needleworker at Colonial Williamsburg. In addition to teaching needlework I was given some interesting assignments, one of which was stitching napkins for the dining room in the (then) newly refurbished Governor's Palace.

A Smithsonian Institution publication entitled The Copp Family Textiles (1971) proved most useful as it described how colonial household linens were marked in cross stitch to keep sets together. Similar to modern day monogramming, marked linens usually included a married couple's initials. And, using the Ann Pasteur Maupin sampler as a Williamsburg precedent, it was decided that the back of each Governor's Palace napkin was to look virtually as neat as the front.

My project was overseen by the Curator of Textiles and passed muster. As best I recall, I made ten napkins (give or take). The following year I made a pair at home to give to my parents for their 30th wedding anniversary: B for Barnett, A for Arthur, R for Ruth. The linen was 60 threads per inch, so the marking was only 1" high. And yes, the back looked pretty tidy, which makes sense when you can see both sides.

Back detail

Fast forward 32 years ... as part of my online study at "Considering Weave" I decided to try weaving some 60-count linen by hand. Not having fine enough thread (50/2 was the only linen I had) it ended up closer to 1.75" across.

So far it's been an interesting experience and I'm starting to wonder where my bit of even-weave cloth will end up. I'll have to post another picture when it's complete and off my shadow-box "loom."

Oh ... about the quarter. I grabbed it out of Don's coin jar and realized after snapping the pictures that it's dated 1982, my last year at CW as Needleworker and (no coincidence) the year Meg was born.

- Heart strings: Mending a broken shell with weave

I'm taking an online course called "Considering Weave" at Spirit Cloth. As I've mentioned before, Jude Hill is a gifted teacher, but in this interactive setting, my cohorts are equally instructive.

One posted a woven meditation on beachcombed driftwood and shells, another a piece of driftwood encased in weave (I'm hoping she will grant me permission to post a picture).

Inspired, I dug into my shell basket ...

and pulled out a broken shell gathered six years ago after my mom passed away.

My first task was to figure out how to warp the shell, which took several tries before I found a way to keep the threads from slipping (I used 4 strands of DMC floss, btw).

Then I started weaving the inside with a variegated floss ... which I can't show you because it was "Not good enough" so I tore it out ... but it looked something like this test weave on another shell.

I turned to the front and did what I'm good at: plain weave, plain color ... uniform and consistent.

Then I turned back to the colorful shell interior and decided to make a heart from variegated floss ...

But my inner critic said, "Not good enough" and I began to cut it out ... only to find that I liked the cut threads. So I pushed the two bands together into a rainbow arc before tearing out the heart.

And then I remembered a pink silk scarf of my mom's that I had over-dyed with onion skins. Tearing a strip off, it was so fine that I could thread it on a needle ... the loose fibers like nothing so much as feather down.  I wove the silk from top to bottom, until I missed a thread and the silk became hopelessly tangled in the warp. So I stopped ... and didn't try to fix it.

Nudging the threads of the arc down in the middle I once again had my heart ... this time a broken, frayed version tied by a slender thread to the perfect exterior.

And it was good enough.