About Me & My Artistic Expression (or Thread Obsession)

When I was a small girl, every Sunday afternoon my mother took us kids to visit my Grandparents. While my mother and grandmother chatted at the kitchen table over coffee, I wandered through the company rooms of the house admiring all the fancy workings that adorned the furniture. Every table top was covered with at least one fancy working. Towels were trimmed in lace, as was every hand cloth, pillowcase and tablecloth. And every week this fascinating display changed!

In my Grandparents home my Grandmothers "private" area was in the basement right next to the cloths washer and across from a very large stove. While my grandmother sat waiting for the cloths to wash and the oven to bake, she would create her fancy workings. As a little girl I would sit on the floor at my Grandmothers feet and watch her knit or crochet. This is how I learned . . . . by watching. To this day I still knit backwards.

What fascinated me as a child remains a passion of mine today - some 40 years later. I naturally gravitate towards century old patterns and have a fondness for Victorian and Celtic designs. I draw a great deal of my inspiration from nature, which is probably why I'm so hooked on Irish Crochet. I also recently I began creating some of my own designs and will some day put them to patterns. I work with a variety of fibers in creating my work such as cotton, bamboo, wool & linen - and lots of color!

In this blog I'll talk about things like fiber, crochet tips and techniques, and share my knowledge in the crafts history. Resources are immense with the internet, but I'll list my favorites here too.

My greatest passion is crochet, but I do still knit from time to time.

You can browse through an array of my creations at:

Artistic Needlework: www.etsy.com/shop/ArtisticNeedlework

Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Artistic-Needlework/101214780007413

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/ArtisticNeedleW/

Posted by Artistic NeedleWork

Deciphering Century Old Patterns:

Crochet has been handed down from generation to generation through family and friends with or without written patterns. In the 1800's it was very common to work directly from a picture of the finished work or from a sample of crochet. If you've ever tried to crochet a pattern from the 1800's or 1900's, you will find that most of the directions seem to be missing. This is because needlework was taught to the young women in school from the early 1800's through the early 1900's - before pattern books were published. The women of that time knew what the publishers meant because they were all too familiar with crochet instructions from their needlework classes. Thus, publishers didn't think they needed to put all that extraneous stuff in the written instructions.

I love the challenge of deciphering old patterns and create much of my lace using antique pattern books. I also frequently replicate a piece from old workings I pickup at estate sales or antique shops. A great source for very old pattern books online is: Antique Pattern Library The Antique Pattern Library

This ongoing project is an effort to scan craft pattern publications that are in the public domain, to preserve them, so we can keep our craft heritages in our hands. Most of these scans have been graphically edited to make the images easier for craft workers to see, and to reduce file sizes. They are available, for free, to anyone who wants them, for educational, personal, artistic and other creative uses - NOT FOR RESALE.

I go to the Catalog and then search by Technique

Happy pattern surfing!




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