One of my favourite tasks here at RHE Media is searching for
interesting and relevant out-of-copyright titles to add to our Vintage Words of
Wisdom list. However, sometimes the books we unearth are not suitable for ebook
conversion, often because the illustrations are not of sufficient quality. This
is the case with two titles I acquired recently – Needlework and Crafts by Irene Davison, Agnes M. Miall and R.K.
& M.I.R. Polkinghorne and Stitch
Patterns & Designs for Embroidery by Anne Brandon-Jones. Both of these
titles contain a great deal of useful information on embroidery and other
crafts. The contents of Needlework and
Crafts includes everything from plain sewing and hand embroidery through
dressmaking, mending, crochet and knitting, to crafts such as gesso-work,
poker-work, leather work and basketry.
Sadly, the illustrations are poor and don’t scan well, which is a shame.
On the upside, there was a nice surprise at the back of the Needlework and Crafts book – an envelope
containing 10 gift transfers. These are iron-on transfers of a range of designs
that were very popular in the 1920s. The designs are pretty, as you can see
from the illustration at the top of this post and the following example.
Our aim with the Vintage Words of Wisdom titles is to make
wise words from the past more widely available again as ebooks. Therefore, I
have selected some useful and interesting content from Needlework and Crafts and Stitch
Patterns & Designs for Embroidery, and added this to a section from our
edition of Lillie London’s NeedleworkBook, to create a Vintage Needlework Gift Pack. The Gift Pack includes
scans of some of the transfers I found at the back of Needlework and Crafts as well as the section of the book that
relates to these transfers.
To request a copy of the free Gift Pack please
register with us by completing the Registration Form and click on ‘Craft’ in
the list of topics of interest. The Gift Pack PDF will be sent to you by email.
All those who register with us to receive the
free Gift Pack will also be entered into a Free Prize Draw to win our office copy
of Needlework and Crafts with the 10
iron-on transfers in the back. One lucky winner will be selected on 29th
March 2015 (when British Summer Time begins and we can look forward to longer
and warmer days). Register soon to be included in this free prize draw.
In the midst of winter gloom and post-Christmas, my thoughts
turn to spring and to the next holiday, which is Easter. My family often come
to me for lunch on Easter Sunday and there are gifts and an Easter Egg Hunt for
the children. This year I am planning to revive a childhood craft skill,
inspired by Project 77 and Lillie London Lesson on creating wool toys for
children in our edition of LillieLondon’s Needlework Book. When I was at primary school there was a craze
for making wool pompoms by winding odd bits of multi-coloured wool around
cardboard circles. It was a fad that was probably inspired by the children’s TV
programme Blue Peter (I think Lesley Judd made Flumps using pompoms) and we
spent hours winding wool and experimenting with different effects by tying in a
variety of colours at intervals during the wind.
I was therefore both amused and pleased to find that Lillie
London had included a project in her book to create chicks and bunnies for
children using these wool pompoms. It hadn’t occurred to me as a child to trim
the pompoms into different shapes and use different sizes of pompom together to
create animals. It will be fun to create Easter gifts using this technique and
I have included the project and lesson from the book in the free Vintage
Needlework Gift Pack so you can have a go too.
For a nostalgic indulgence, here is a link to some clips of
children’s TV from the 1970s and 1980s, including Blue Peter. Sadly I couldn’t
find a video of Lesley Judd making pompom Flumps but there are several episodes
of Blue Peter from the 1970s on YouTube.
No comments:
Post a Comment