Kim Sanders
Crewel Necessities Huswife
Organize your favorite tools in a beautifully embroidered huswife. Crewel Necessities uses a wide variety of stitches to make the stitching fun. Tips on handling crewel wool, making plump, smooth satin stitch, creating sharp corners with chain stitch and invisibly joining a new thread for line stitches ensure success. Students may embroider the huswife as shown or add their own variations embellishing the diagonal trellis. The back of the class sample is blank. Students may choose to personalize their huswife with initials and/or a date.
Crewel Necessities is a good introduction for those new to crewel embroidery. However, the variety of stitches should hold the interest of those familiar with the technique. The design may be stitched exactly as shown. But more advanced or adventuresome students will be encouraged to experiment with their own design changes for the interior pockets. Certain stitches such as whipped spider web and buttonhole circle are interchangeable in this design. The lattice of the scissors pocket can be left plain or embellished with several variations of the stiches used in the exterior embroidery.
Complete instructions are included to finish the huswife. The finishing techniques which will be demonstrated in class can be applied to future projects.
Lecture during class will include information on why traditional crewel colors were indigo blue, gold, olive green and rusty red. The materials used to achieve these colors, indigo, madder, goldenrod, onion skins and the necessity of mordanting to achieve color fastness will be discussed as students stitch. That each pound of wool required a pound of dye stuff helps explain why historic crewel pieces frequently employed stitches that conserved precious colored thread.