Oooh, perfect timing:
The amazing stitcher Jude at Spirit Cloth will be offering a free online workshop on patchwork in October.
Just yesterday I'd lugged home on my bike from the Thrift Store a bulky bag of old embroidered household odds and ends;
some of them actual ends: someone had cut off and saved the hand-embroidered ends of worn-out pillows.
Many were unfinished pieces, some with the threaded needle still tucked into the fabric.
That pings my heart, like an old photo of someone in a group (say, at a picnic) who just happened to glance at the camera as the shutter snapped.
I googled how to wash them, and read that Oxy-clean gets out the yellow. So I got some at the nearby K-Mart, soaked the linens, and then hand-washed them.
They did brighten up a lot, but the chemical smell is
nasty. Also, the chemical removed the lingering traces of the printed
embroidery pattern. Boo.
(Anyone have any old-linens laundering tips?)
I didn't know what to do with these things---they're not "art" or really saleable at the store, tattered and worn, still stained, or half-done as they mostly are.
They're just workaday dime-store patterns––like the photo here–– common to a generation now gone, and not even particularly well-sewn.
I just hated to put them in the store's cloth recycling bin.
But now I will patchwork them! in Jude's workshop.
_____________________________________________
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
––J. R. R. Tolkein, Gandalf in Fellowship of the Ring (via)
The amazing stitcher Jude at Spirit Cloth will be offering a free online workshop on patchwork in October.
Just yesterday I'd lugged home on my bike from the Thrift Store a bulky bag of old embroidered household odds and ends;
some of them actual ends: someone had cut off and saved the hand-embroidered ends of worn-out pillows.
Many were unfinished pieces, some with the threaded needle still tucked into the fabric.
That pings my heart, like an old photo of someone in a group (say, at a picnic) who just happened to glance at the camera as the shutter snapped.
I googled how to wash them, and read that Oxy-clean gets out the yellow. So I got some at the nearby K-Mart, soaked the linens, and then hand-washed them.
They did brighten up a lot, but the chemical smell is
nasty. Also, the chemical removed the lingering traces of the printed
embroidery pattern. Boo.(Anyone have any old-linens laundering tips?)
I didn't know what to do with these things---they're not "art" or really saleable at the store, tattered and worn, still stained, or half-done as they mostly are.
They're just workaday dime-store patterns––like the photo here–– common to a generation now gone, and not even particularly well-sewn.
I just hated to put them in the store's cloth recycling bin.
But now I will patchwork them! in Jude's workshop.
_____________________________________________
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
––J. R. R. Tolkein, Gandalf in Fellowship of the Ring (via)
