Reason to Smile

I just noticed that this tatted collar and cuffs set looks like a big smile the way I have pinned the pieces for blocking. That smile pretty much represents the way I feel about finishing the tatting on this project--now I have to design the top to go with it. I've gotten inspired from some of the offerings on etsy.com to create a top that is not at all granny-ish. Wish me luck.

The collar and cuffs pattern is from Barbara Foster's book "Learn Needle Tatting Step-by-Step." One of these days I'll take the online shuttle tatting class, but in the meantime, I'm happy with what I can create with a needle.

I'm starting to work hard on our Gallery Walk, scheduled for June 5. There are still a lot of decisions to be made and people to be talked to. It is shaping up into a big, fun event with a lot of different things going on in downtown Bedford. Put it on your calendar for 5-8 p.m. and go have a nice dinner afterward.

You're gonna LOVE Barbara Lynn!

I'm really looking forward to Barbara Lynn's exhibition at our center, which opens with a reception on Friday, May 15, from 5-7 p.m. Barbara is one of the most naturally creative people I know, and her work always brings a smile. I get a big kick out of this gourd clown, and the gourd mushrooms pictured at oldjailarts.com. I haven't seen everything that is going into this exhibit, but I know there will be a lot of happy surprises and I know you're going to love Barbara's work. Put the opening reception on your calendar and come celebrate with us.

I'm pretty much finished with my tatted collar and cuffs, but haven't found time to block them yet, so stay tuned for a photo.

What can you make with 2,688 tiny patches?

This quilt! I finished the top today and am ready for a celebration. I started this quilt on another continent, in Tbilisi, about four or five years ago, in the downstairs sewing room with my kids. The fabrics are scraps from thirty years' worth of sewing projects, my husband's old shirts, clothes I wore as a kid, worn-out sheets, and donations from friends and relatives. Each patch started out as a 2" square, sewn into 16-patch squares, sewn into 64-patch squares...well, you can see how it turned out. And now to get it quilted.

Streamcliff Farm near Commiskey

I haven't had much time for needlework in the couple of weeks since my last post, but I wanted to let you all know about a lovely place about an hour east of Bedford called Stream Cliff Herb Farm (check it out at www.streamclifffarm.com). We went there last Sunday to celebrate DS's fourteenth birthday; he loves plants and good food, so Stream Cliff, with its gourmet restaurant and huge plant selection, was the perfect destination. In addition to a wonderful lunch (the berry cobbler a la mode was a high point in a lunch full of culinary delights), we enjoyed walking through the greenhouses and gardens; some of the adults among us had fun sampling wines at the winery. The farm dates back to 1821 and has been in the same family for six generations. Its success is living testimony that there is a market in southern Indiana for wonderful things.

In the pictures you can see our family grouping testing the weight limits of a little Monet-style arched bridge, and my niece enjoying a walk through one of the greenhouses. We were expecting rain at noon but it held up until late afternoon, when DS's new plants were all tucked away in my brother's van and several bottles of wine rested on the back seat of our truck. With DH at the wheel, I allowed the windshield wipers to lull me into a soothing nap all the way home.

Historical Finds

DH and I have spent several days removing crumbling old plaster from the walls of the stairwell of the sheriff's residence. The house is a big mess, of course, but we made a few finds that have helped us learn more about this old building.
A closet had been added to the stairwell, just left of the front door, at some point late in the last century. The closet had a ceiling that was several feet lower than the stairwell ceiling, which is pretty high. When removing the closet, DH found an old Crane ammo box between the two ceilings. It was a time capsule, put there in May 1968 by a fellow from Mitchell named Ron Trueblood. My guess is that Mr. Trueblood is the person who built the closet and added the ubiquitous dark woody paneling to most of the rest of the house. I'm not going to say much about the time capsule just now, since the Times-Mail newspaper is in the process of writing a story, but it was very interesting to travel back to a time that I remember only vaguely from my childhood, when all the important businesses were around the Bedford square. I immediately called my friend and fellow history enthusiast Mary Margaret Stipp, who came over to go through the contents with me. What do you know--on the front page of one of the newspapers in the box was an article by Mary Margaret about the first Lawrence County jail, which was built in Palestine in 1818, before the county seat moved to Bedford.
Removing the plaster walls also revealed some evidence to support my theory that the red brick 1850's jail was at least partly incorporated into our limestone building. I had read that the "new" (i.e., 1904) building was built on the foundations of the old, but there are a number of walls on the first and second floors, and in the attic, that frankly wouldn't have been there had any normal architect designed the building from scratch. A photo and a sketch of the 1850's building in the Lawrence County History Museum confirmed this theory at least partially, and most people agree with me that our kitchen at least is older than the rest of the house.
DH's first find was a square hole, four bricks in size, in the brick wall over the attic stair landing. It seems pretty obvious to me that this hole held a beam of some kind, maybe a roof support given the two-story height of the first jail. What that would mean is that the entire north wall of the 1850's jail was built into the 1904 building.
The second find was even more exciting; a window in the wall between the kitchen and the stairwell, proving that the wall predates the house. The window is at an odd height--too high up for the first floor and too low for the second. I can't say why it is so exciting to find evidence of a 150-year-old window that has been hidden for over 100 yers, but it is, and I'm thinking hard about ways to finish the stairwell without hiding it again.
All the breaking and hauling of plaster (and cleaning of the resulting dust) has left me with little time to work on any of my other projects, unfortunately.

Pfaff City

In 1980, while I was serving with the U.S. Army in Frankfurt, Germany, I went to the PX and picked out the sewing machine of my dreams, a top-of-the-line Pfaff 1222E, all metal, made in Germany, with a switch to allow operation on U.S. 110-volt and European 220-volt electricity. It cost me somewhere between $600 and $700; I put it on layaway (a great thing in those pre-credit card days) and it was a few months before I could take it home.

This sewing machine has been my most beloved friend for almost 30 years, dragged from one side of the Atlantic to the other several times. For a while, unable to imagine living without it for even a day, I carried it on the plane with me, since it fit under the seat nicely. Occasionally a stewardess would argue with me as I tried to bring it in, but I generally won those arguments and used it as a footrest on countless transatlantic flights. I only abandoned that practice when I had to carry babies and diaper bags instead.

With my Pfaff I made a beautiful outfit that my handsome young husband wore in a fashion show, a wedding dress for my friend Pat, a raw silk suit for my mom, two suits for my mother-in-law, two sets of blue and white draperies for the bay window of our house in Maryland, bedding and curtains for the nursery, a whole queen-size quilt top and lots of other things too numerous to list. My Pfaff was more faithful than most friends and never let me down, until recently.

You could say it let DH down. While trying to patch his own clothes, he managed to break the machine. I don't really blame him; it IS 29 years old and he is normally the person who fixes things; he's not a breaker by nature. He tried hard to fix my machine, but it needed a part that a broad Internet search revealed to be no longer available.

I suppose I could have just bought a new machine, but you know how it is when an inanimate object becomes a member of the family? I couldn't bear to retire the old Pfaff. I also suspect that no new machine could be as good as the one I already own. Thus began our search for twin machines that could be used for parts. We had several false starts on eBay, but were finally successful in buying one whose motor supposedly didn't work. It arrived, much newer-looking than mine, and guess what? DH managed to fix it, more or less. Of course that meant we still needed spare parts for my machine, so we bought another one. This one was missing a lot of parts, but had the one we needed, plus a much nicer case than mine, which was itself a replacement bought after the original case got damaged in shipment back from Africa ten years ago.

So now I have two Pfaff 1222's, both more or less working, and an extra for spare parts, all sitting on the table in my sewing room. There's no room to actually do any sewing, but how great is that?

Free Tatted Edging Pattern!

My mom and I like to make day trips into the Indiana countryside, and on one of those trips, I found the antique white dresser scarf you see in the picture. I was struck by the way the designer of this edging stacked large ovals to form columns, reminiscent of classical architecture. I had never seen this particular design of tatted edging before, and the price was right, so I bought the scarf for my friend Stephen Bowman, lacemaker extraordinaire, who was having a birthday soon, as I recall.

Stephen is gifted in all the lacemaking arts. He is the founder of the Bedford College of Lacemaking, our first tenant at the Old Jail Art Center, and he was/is my tatting and bobbin lacemaking teacher. Check out Stephen's website at www.bedfordcollegeoflacemaking.com for more information on lacemaking classes and other fun stuff. Stephen rose to the challenge of preserving this edging pattern for posterity by figuring out, stitch by stitch, how the original artist made it and documenting his findings. He worked it up in a blue size 20 thread (see the top photo), and checked his enormous library of tatting patterns (including about 40 years of Workbasket magazine) to ensure we wouldn't be violating any copyright laws in making the pattern available to you.

Here is the pattern for an antique edging that Stephen calls "Rowena's Tatted Edging" and I call "Tatted Columns." Enjoy.

Abbreviations:

R = (ring) Ch = (chain) Clr = (close ring) Rw = (reverse work) + = (joining of picots)
P = (picot) Rnd = (round) Tw = (twist stitch) Ds = (double stitch) Sep = (separated)



R 3ds, p, 3ds, p, 6ds, clr, rw

Ch 4ds, p, 4ds, rw


R 6ds, p, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 4ds, p, 4ds, rw


*


R 6ds, p, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 4ds, p, 4ds, rw


R 6ds, join, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 2ds, p, 2ds, p, 2ds, p, 2ds, p, 2ds, p, 2ds, p, 2ds, p, 2ds, rw


R 6ds, join, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 4ds, p, 4ds, rw


R 6ds, join, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 4ds, p, 4ds, rw


R 6ds, join, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 4ds, p, 4ds, rw


R 6ds, join, 3ds, p, 3ds, clr, DO NOT REVERSE WORK


Ch 4ds, p, 4ds, DO NOT REVERSE WORK


R 3ds, p, 3ds, p, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 4ds, join, 4ds, rw


R 6ds, p, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 4ds, join, 4ds, rw


R 6ds, p, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 4ds, join, 4ds, rw


Repeat from * for desired length.