- Stickley speaking

Last June we visited friends in Richmond, Virginia who have a 100-year old Craftsman bungalow. With its modern day Stickley furnishings and period details, I was smitten.Then Martha and Gary came to visit us this fall, during which time they rued missing the changing of the ginkgo leaves in their neighborhood.Ever since, I've found myself trolling through Pinterest looking at Arts and Crafts textiles, particularly those depicting ginkgo leaves. Today I finally tried my hand at a Stickley-inspired appliqué ...

Patch #49

which I hope to use as a jumping-off point for the Texas cottonwood leaf to the left (among other things). Rather than the coarse linen backing and heavy chain stitch outline recommended by Stickley, I used a fine linen/cotton thrifted table cloth for the background and a sheer thrifted cotton skirt for the appliqué ...

I was hoping this book would provide practical details ...

but in the end, it was Stickley himself who provided the guidance I needed in his book Craftsman Fabrics and Needlework. I copied, scaled up and printed the image of a ginkgo leaf table runner, cut out one leaf, and traced lightly around it onto the cotton using a Pitt pen ...

The image pixelated, but that wasn't a problem

After cutting it out, I pinned it to the linen/cotton patch ...

and stitched it down, followed by an outline worked in Jude's split backstitch with a single strand of floss (which she aptly calls "splitting hairs") ...

I'm very happy with the end result, front ...

and back ...

and am now considering how to render this beautiful cottonwood leaf souvenir from last year's trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico ...

P.S. I also updated Patch #39 ...

which was far more fun than I had on February 8th.