tea towels

Yesterday afternoon I drove to a couple of my favorite nearby antique malls. I always look for cute and unusual examples of embroidery and I wasn't disappointed—three tea towels, each with a different look and feel.

The first is a really nice idea. A section of red linen is sandwiched between two of white linen. Over the sewn seam is white feather stitch embroidery and at the bottom of the red panel is a mostly satin stitch bunch of holly leaves and berries. All very nicely done.



The second is a cute cross stitch parrot on a perch and I love the pink and white striped border. This one isn't in perfect condition—kind of faded and with a few holes along the edge, but I think I'll be able to use it for something.





Third, and last, is a pretty blue-bordered towel with hollyhocks (I think) done in applique and embroidery. I love the use of the little circles in various shades of blue—simple in themselves but combined together to form the flower. I think this is probably from the 1950s but looks modern enough that it could have been made today.



The embroidery is just straight stitch radiating out from the center to form a circle.



The rest of my purchases weren't all that noteworthy—a few hankies, aprons, and buttons. Both malls aren't quite as good as they used to be and I hope this isn't a trend as I start my summer shopping.

you can never have too many strawberries

Seeing all those pillows again in my last post got me reminiscing about some of the linens I used to make them. The two pillows on the top shelf at the far right were made from a set of embroidered tea towels that I bought on Ebay. And they had some of the prettiest examples of cross stitch embroidery I've seen. The colors were bright and the stitching was perfectly done—and tiny, too. The finished pillows were only 14 inches square so that gives you an idea of the size. The towels had some stains that I couldn't get out so I didn't feel too bad about cutting them up.



I love anything with fruit—fabric, embroidery, buttons (and to eat, of course!) and anything I make with them (especially cherries and strawberries) seems to fly off my website. So, I guess I'm not the only one feels the way I do about them.



I wish I'd kept a closeup picture of the raspberries so you could see the stitch that was used. It's sort of an interlocked chain stitch that makes little round loops—the perfect thing for a berry. I'll see if I can find it somewhere in my embroidery books.

I did make a pattern of the strawberry design right before I sold the pillows. And you can download your very own copy here. (You'll need Acrobat Reader to open the file and be patient—it may take a while to open.) The pattern sheet also includes the border design of strawberries and leaves that ran along the bottom of the towel. I used that section across the back of the pillow. For some reason I didn't make a pattern from the raspberries (maybe because of that weird stitch that was used). I'll see what I can do using my photo as reference.

Have fun with this pattern, which is perfect for tea towels but makes a pretty cool pillow, too!

valentine goodies

Look for a writeup about my valentine specials today at Vintage Indie, including a discount code for 20% off your order. You can click on the cute kitty valentine to go directly to the page on my website.



There you'll find heart-shaped buttons, valentine hanky pillows and sachets, a couple of tissue cozies, and just about everything on my site that's red and white and has hearts on it! I've also created two tea towels trimmed with a valentine-themed fabric, hot pink rickrack, and an embroidered kitty from my Year of Cats vintage embroidery pattern. Isn't he cute?



Since I haven't been blogging much these past few weeks you may think I'm just sitting around goofing off. Not! I have five new pillows for spring on my work table and the paperwork for my taxes is just about done. Yay! It's also been really cold here and I do have a tendency to burrow in for the winter. I've been reading a lot, too!