Embroidery Heritage

I remember admiring this table runner as a young girl and marveling at the tiny stitches and the colours. As an adult and a pretty “crafty mummy”, I still marvel at it’s beauty and the time that must have been spent on it.

It was made by my Mum when she was at college. It is sampler displaying her skills in a number of stitches and techniques, and she made it for assessment. Isn’t she clever?

The bunny is a made from a piece of braid laid out in the shape of a bunny then stitched down to stay there. It is called couching.

You can just see the scalloped edge below the bunny. This is satin stitched in variegated cotton then the excess fabric is trimmed away to create the edging.

The panel above the bunny is a dog applique, and you can see in this photo that between each panel there was more needlework.

The flower above the dog is a technique called cutwork, similar to the edging. The satin stitching is done first then some of the fabric is cut away from between the stitches.

Above the flower is an example of beading on fabric. As she stitched along the lines, she added beads so they are secured with each stitch.

Above the beaded flower is more embroidery. Her initials are in variegated satin stitch and the flowers are worked in lazy daisy stitch, stem stitch and french knots.

More embroidery stitches – cross stitch for the yellow rose and stem and lazy daisy for the pink rose. You can see the gorgeous pulled work in between these panels. First you pull out some of the threads in the fabric, then stitch and weave another thread to create the pattern.  

Finally another flower this time purple and worked in tiny chain stitch.

In some of the shots you can see the crochet edging that was worked along the length of the runner. It too is very fine and hand done.

Mum would be pleased to know that I could probably do most of those stitches, but I don’t think my work is anywhere near as fine as hers. It really is an heirloom.

I think it is time to teach my girl some of these stitches too.