Hand-stitched home: embroidered inspirations, ideas, and projects

238 Pages·2013·10.35 MB·English

by  Caroline Zoob

Dedication
To Caroline Turner and Miranda Money for their unfailing friendship and
support

Contents
Dedication
Introduction
Making pictures
On the edge
At the table
The soft stuff
At the window
Stitches and techniques
Templates
Suppliers
Acknowledgments
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
Man is primed to want to decorate a blank surface, whether by placing
handprints on the walls of Neolithic caves or by embroidering linen burial cloths
for the mummified dead in the Egypt of 2000 BC. The Book of Exodus in the
Bible is full of references to embroidery.
Little domestic embroidery survives from before the fifteenth century, and yet
it is not hard to imagine that it was used to decorate and add comfort in the
simplest of homes for many centuries before.
Today many people associate embroidery in the home with the piles of
embroidered tray cloths, doilies, and antimacassars made from patterns
published in women’s magazines in the first half of the twentieth century. Today
our interiors are simpler, yet there is still a place for embroidered detail. It can be
as simple as a white flower on the edge of an upholstered chair or a line of
running stitch along the edge of a stripe. Conversely, a sparely furnished room
with a neutral color palette can be transformed by one or two richly embroidered
surfaces. The aim of this book is to suggest ways in which you can add
embroidered detail to your home, whatever your personal decorating style may
be.
Three small whitework flowers along the edge of the seat of this antique French
chair echo the carved decoration on the back of the chair and introduce an
embroidered touch to an otherwise austere room.
A vintage director’s chair has been given new life with chair backs made from
antique French linen, decorated with a simple stylized white flower appliquéd to
one side.
Inspiration When you decorate a room you gather swatches of fabric, scraps of
carpet, little cards of paint colors to set the tone for how you want the room to
look. You should also do this when you are thinking of starting an embroidery.
Collect materials that will inspire a beautiful design, such as threads, buttons,
little frames, old greetings cards and scraps of lace. Keep them around you when
you begin to plan how you want your work to look. What works for me is to
always have a row of little bottles on my workroom windowsill, in which I
display flowers or leaves on stems. The more you surround yourself with pretty
colors, textures, and natural finds, the easier you will find it to embroider. Most
important of all though is to keep your eyes open to spot the things around you
that you can visualize captured in stitches.
An arrangement of garden flowers in my workroom ready for sketching.