Sunday, February 26, 2012

It's in the bag...

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Good morning! I hope you have a nice cup of tea, because this looks to be a long and picture-laden post! I'm going to show you my small collection of 1800's and early 1900's beaded bags, show you some of my vintage pattern books with their bag pictures and patterns, and - if my typing fingers hold out - a nice surprise at the end.

I've always been fascinated by those intricately beaded designs on little bags that were popular and useful items for over 100 years. I've seen them in my early 1800's knitting and crochet manuals right up through the early 1900's. Even in the 30's and 40's there were simpler versions of these bags in pattern magazines but their popularity was waning.

These covers from my 1920's Fleisher's manuals show the types of bags still used then, but less as chatelaines and more as project-bags:

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Corticelli was another company that produced silk knitting and crochet threads and created pattern books to go with them. This reproduction Corticelli booklet from Iva Rose was originally printed in 1917 and is full of designs in the popular bright colours of that era as well as a few of the earlier bags in bead crochet and filet crochet.

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My Heminway & Sons Silk-Craft manual also has a variety of these bags but from decades earlier. Heminway, established in 1849, also manufactured silk knitting and crochet thread - a laborious and exacting science in those years:

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I have some original spools of this knitting silk in my collection, and from experimentation I've found that Perle Cotton size 5 might be substituted for some of these patterns, and comes in as wide a variety of colours as the early silks. You need something with a twist for durability (the original spools were called "Silk Twist") but thin enough for threading the tiny, tiny glass or steel beads.

My earliest bags are beautiful examples of the glass and steel bead crochet. Some are simpler geometric designs, like these from the 1800's using cotton twist and faceted bronze-coloured glass beads. I love the big beaded tassel on this small bag:

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and this larger bag with its beaded, turned-down collar and celluloid rings that the drawstring loops through:

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This cream silk twist bag has rows and rows of beaded swags and beaded diamonds and a tightly crocheted, beaded ball-and-tassel (incredibly, I found it at a charity shop with a $5 price tag in a box of purses. I did tell them it was mis-marked and paid them a fair price for it):

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This magnificent example is in navy Silk Twist with steel/precious metal beads:

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It's incredibly heavy - like carrying a brick of metal - and maybe that is the reason that there is no wear or flaw of any kind on this bag, even though it is at least 100 years old. An antique appraiser told me that the beads were sterling silver.

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This bag also has rings, silver ones, for the drawstring...

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But the drawstring is a chain - as delicate and intricate as a silver necklace - beautiful!

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The Heminway Silk-Craft book has a pattern for a silver-bead style bag, not as elaborate in design, but a pretty example:

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It also shows patterns for the cotton crochet bags, with beads used just for the poesy design:

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But the King and Queen of my little collection are the silk "beaded picture" bags:

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These bags use such tiny crochet stitches and the glass beads themselves are minuscule. There are at least 45 beads to one inch in this example, and hundreds in a round.

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The Heminway booklet has one pattern for this type of bag. I imagine it would take a year to complete it - the pattern alone is 11 pages long! The Oak Leaf and Acorn bag:

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It uses 2 and 1/2 spools of silk twist, 7 skeins (beads threaded on string) of black beads, 5 skeins of bright yellow beads, 5 skeins of dark yellow beads, and 2 skeins of red-brown beads. The directions that follow give exact instructions for threading every single tiny glass bead onto the silk twist in a colour configuration that will result in the design pictured, similar to hand-painting yarn before knitting it. Then a tiny crochet stitch is made in between each and every of those thousands of beads to create the fabric and the beaded design. Each bead has to be threaded in exactly the right sequence in order for the "picture" to materialize - Amazing!

Well, I do have a related pattern for you, but I've run out of time so that will have to wait for the next blog post. If you have ever tried beaded crochet, let me know - I'd love to see your projects!

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Button, button

This has been a weekend of memories. A dear friend, who was a roommate in my youth, has lost her husband after a short and violent illness.

O furious Wind, I am only a straw before you;
How could I know where I will be blown next?
Whoever claims to have made a pact with Destiny
Reveals himself a liar and a fool;
What is any of us but a straw in a storm?
How could anyone make a pact with a hurricane?

Love Is The Master
~Rumi


This evening I felt at a loss and wanted comfort from the turmoil in my mind. I remembered that Erik Erikson called his wife's, Joan's, bead collection "the eyes of the Mother". So I pulled out my button collection and it cheered me to pour through my favorites and admire their beauty and endurance.

I keep my best buttons in my Sajou sewing box that my friend gave me last year for Christmas. It's a wonderful box full of French sewing items: a square of marking chalk, little scissors, threads, needles, tapes and things:

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...and I love the cover especially, with its picture of a dog and cat winding yarn:

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Here are some of my favorite buttons, though the photos aren't very clear.

These are a set of green Bakelite toggles, softly shiny and marbled:

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And these are Bakelite of a rare clear amber colour:

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These three are flat Bakelite, brown... but they're elongated hearts and I love them:

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and these are tiny little amber-coloured early celluloid:

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These sweet little buttons are porcelain pressed into dog heads and hand painted:

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and, finally, my swallows in teal green and coral pink:

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So charming! I'm saving these for the perfect garment. Do you think it will ever materialize?

Another thing I find comforting when my mind is troubled is crochet. I don't know whether it's my association of crochet with loved relatives long passed, or the soothing ease of the hook's work, but I always keep a crocheted blanket project on hand for trying times.

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After 32 squares of my brilliant variegated Socks That Rock yarn, I've started on a few of the shaded-solid colourways...

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This is (left to right in 3 rows) Winter Solstice, Ramalaba, Help Us, Rhonda!, KMBFLA, Brick, Buttah, Saffron Jungle, and Nyame, Sunstone, and Mossay...

When I started this traditional Granny Square blanket, I couldn't find exactly the pattern that I wanted, with a four-petaled flower in the center and a balanced contrast with a dark background that would show off the colours...

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So, I made up my own:

Sophia's Memory Garden Blanket (Traditional)

Each square takes just a couple of yards of bright fingering weight yarn, and an equal or very slightly longer amount of dark yarn.

The hook is a US D/ 3.25 mm size - I use a Skacel Addi Swing Hook.

Start with the bright yarn and make a chain of 5 stitches. Join to make a round.

Chain 4, and into this circle make 2 DC, ch1, 3 DC, ch1, 3 DC, ch1, 3 DC, and ch1. Join this last chain to the 4th ch of the chain 4 that began your flower. Slip st across the top of the 2 DC to the center Ch1.

Change to the dark yarn. Into the ch1 space chain 4 and then 2 DC, 1ch, 3 DC. *Do not chain one. Skip to the next Chain 1 space and make 3 DC, ch1, 3 DC.* Repeat from * twice more. End by connecting with a slipped stitch to the 4th chain in the chain 4.

Slip st across the top of the 2 DC to the center Ch1.Change to the bright yarn. Into the chain 1 space, chain 4 and then 2 DC, 1ch, 3 DC. *Do not chain one. Skip to the next Chain 1 space and make 3 DC, ch1, 3 DC.* Repeat from * into each chain 1 space. End by connecting with a slipped stitch to the 4th ch in the first chain 4 of the round. Repeat another round with the bright yarn.

Repeat two rounds with the dark yarn and fasten off.

I found it best to fasten off each round after finishing a bright or dark sequence and crochet over the tail to weave it in. When I've finished enough squares - and the 32 I photographed above appear to be only about a tenth of what I'll need - I'll probably slip stitch them together and then crochet a small shell stitch border all around.

It is comforting to make. But I think it will be even more comforting to curl cosily under it at the end of a cold, sad weekend.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

All Laced Up

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Good morning! (a special good morning to my friend Nad across the ocean!) I hope you have a nice cup of tea this morning, or evening, wherever you are because this is going to be a long post about vintage booklets and lace patterns.

We were supposed to have a cosy but not too severe snow storm last night, with several inches of snow and so I thought it would be a good time to pull out the old knitting and crochet books and have a nice look-though with a cup of tea. I had such a fun time looking through them again and again, and picking out my favorites to show you!

However, the snow storm never developed - which is a good thing for me with my long driveway! We had these sunny skies instead:

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I should have gone outdoors for more than a couple of dog-walks, but the indoors cose was so soul-restoring for all that!

The books I have to show you are old ones:

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Dainty Work for Pleasure and Profit, 1901


Home Needlework Magazine, Feb-Mar 1912


Home Needlework Magazine, Aug 1915


The magazines themselves are works of art. I really love this aspect of vintage books and magazines. They strove to make the outsides as creative and inspiring as the insides. Rather than try to "hook" you with snappy catch-phrases and current watch-words, they highlighted one of the patterns that was contained inside, or they employed a current artist to draw a gorgeous scene. The August Home Needlework displays an enlarged version of one of the silk embroidery patterns in this issue, dragonflies, waterlilies, and cattails...

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Even the ads are works of art, often illustrated with artist's ink drawings. The only place that has such beautiful ads these days is Ravelry (and sometimes Etsy)!

The Corticelli Kitten:

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I love the art-nouveau border on this crochet cotton ad:

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But my first reason for searching through old books to begin with was to find some pretty lace trims to crochet. I do love knitted lace, but there is something about those crochet picots and shells that just makes me happy!

Many people, when they think about old lace, think first of filet crochet - and it's true that filet is gorgeous and there are so many ways to adapt it. Take this beautiful tray mat, for instance:

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Although it is designed for a small mat for serving, it would be so perfect to keep repeating the motif and make a kitchen window half curtain! All you would need to do is sew a series of those old bone rings across the top, or even crochet a series of loops - anything for the spring-rod to go through. It would be an even more beautiful baby blanket, crocheted in a soft chunky yarn and lined on the back with a deep blue flannel to look like the birds were flying through the sky!

Just in case anyone would like to try any of these ideas, this might help:

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Many of the lace patterns in my old books were used to make panels that either were inserted between panels of fine cotton lawn for petticoats, or were sewn together side by side for bed-covers. This is a good example:

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and the edging to go around the border is one of my favorites:

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It would be really pretty as the edge of a baby's bedsheet or on a pillowcase as a gift, wouldn't it?

This is a classic edging for cotton nightgowns and pillowcases, too:

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And I particularly love this one because it reminds me of seashells from the beach:

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Some trims are complicated and combine several different types of crochet stitches back-and-forth to complete the entire design, like these, but they are well worth the results!

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That last one, of off-center fans, I did try to replicate for you in one of Blue Moon Fiber Arts' silk yarns... but turned out so wonky that I pulled it all out by the end of the night. The directions leave a lot to the imagination and experience of the lace worker, who is supposed to use the drawing as a guide. I know I can master it, but it will take a little longer than I was willing to spend last night!

It's the little tiny trims that I love best. I really like changing up old patterns by using new colours and weights of yarns and wished that I could have summoned enough energy last night to sample these little lace patterns in some bright cotton threads to show you! How pretty these trims would be in Pond Scum Green (one of my favorite new colours), Tomato Red, or Butter Yellow! Here are some unfortunately blurry little photos of the tiny edging laces from the 1901 book:

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I'll share one last one, with it's precious little bell flowers, with you here. It calls for crocheting into the picots of a "fancy braid" but you could achieve very similar results by starting with a crochet chain and picots. I hope that if you try it out, you'll post a comment here with a link to your results!

Edging No. 2, 1901

1st Row - 3 tr. into 1 picot of fancy braid, 1 ch., pass over 1 picot and repeat.
2nd Row - 1 dc under 1 ch., 5 ch; repeat.

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