belle epoque

In addition to knitting as a great activity to do while lounging in bed and watching trashy TV, I do adore embroidery. It was one of the first crafts I learned from my mom when I was home sick from school as a child. She bought me beautiful little flower samplers from Woolworth’s (oh how I miss Woolworth’s, source of all my early craft supplies!) and taught me the satin stitch, split stitch and french knot so I could spend hours stitching away. I’m planning to make sure I have plenty of patterns transferred onto fabric or dish towels before the new baby comes, so I’ll have lots of projects I can just pick up and work on despite my machine-sewing space being otherwise engaged. Many of those patterns will be Hillary Lang’s wonderful Stitchettes, which I was always quick to snap up as soon as they came out so I wouldn’t miss any. I most recently finished her Quilting Bee Stitchette, with the vague notion of painting an embroidery hoop in a nice turquoise to use as a frame for hanging it on the wall.

Lucky for anyone who did miss a few Stitchettes, Hillary has just made them all available as PDFs!