March 1961: Posies for Cosies

My Stitchcraft project this month was a simple embroidered spray of flowers, originally intended as a decoration for a cushion or traycloth. Having enough cushions and not using traycloths, I updated the design for an iPad cover similar to the one I made last year. The flowers are supposed to be daisies and fern, but the daisies have pointy, blue petals — which I set off against a bright pink background for maximum 60s effect. (The background fabric was left over from the embroidered blackwork cushion from last September.)

Of course, there was no available iron-off transfer, but this design was easy and non-geometric enough that I could copy it out onto paper freehand and then transfer it to the fabric with the “window method” and a washable embroidery marker. The stitching was easy — satin and stem-stitch for leaves and stems, slanting satin-stitch for the blue petals, Romanian stitch for the “feathery foliage” (what a lovely phrase!) and French knots for the centres of the flowers. The only (for me) unusual stitch was the double knot-stitch used to outline the large green leaves. It’s sort of like couching, except you tie a knot in the running thread with each stitch as you go along.

I made it up with an equally bright patterned cotton lining (peacock parade!) with an added layer of quilt batting and the same simple button-closure method I used for the “Gay Goslings”. I am not great at sewing, even or especially a really simple (!) rectangular (!) bag, so the lines are not 100% straight and the design is not perfectly centred. Still, I love the colours and the contrast of the very old-school, Grandma’s tea-cosy design with the modern technological device inside.

Since I don’t actually need this for myself, it will probably be given to whatever nice friend has a birthday and an iPad that needs a cosy. In the meantime, I can hold it up to a window when I want to see something that looks like Spring.

May 1960: “Summer Song”

cosy This is definitely a “cosy of unusual charm”! (Despite the ripped corner on the back cover photo.) It features appliqué and embroidery with different designs on each side and instructions to make it up into either a regular cosy to put over the teapot, or a “nest” to put the teapot into.

My version isn’t a teapot cosy of any kind, since I don’t use them or know anyone who does. Everyone needs a pretty little zippered bag or two, though, to put current projects in, or materials for crafting, or pencils or any kind of small “stuff”, so that is what this project is going to be.

I started with the “bird and strawberries” side. As always, the first question is “how to get the pattern onto the fabric and cut-out bits, since there is no existent transfer.” Remember, back in the day you had to write to Stitchcraft to get the iron-on transfer as a supplement! I used the same graph square technique previously used on the leaf cushion and the gay goslings. It was trickier in this case, since the only good photo was taken at an angle, but I got it to work somehow.

Then I copied the pencil sketch, cut out the individual shapes by pinning them to the felt bits, and pinned them out on the base fabric.

Stitchcraft gives pretty good instructions for the embroidery — which colours for what parts of the appliqué and how many strands. The embroidery work itself was not too difficult, using stem-stitch, Romanian stitch, loop stitches and French knots as well as a bird_straw_emb bit of herringbone and the tiny straight stitches in the strawberries. Still, it was more ambitious than any embroidery I have tried up until now. It doesn’t look quite like the picture and I did take a little bit of licence, but on the whole I was pretty satisfied… except for the legs. Oh dear, oh my, oh no, the legs. I did them three times and they still look weird. Either the angle is wrong, or the thickness, or I don’t know what, but I figured doing it again would only chew up the fabric more, so it is what it is.

Creating the template for the second side, “Bird and Blossom” presented an extra challenge, as there was only a tiny black-and-white photograph in the magazine, where the tea cosy “nest” was open and made the design appear at an angle. I am definitely getting the hang of this copy-grid-paste-and-cut method though, because it went quite quickly and easily and I think I matched the design pretty well — or at least made a decent interpretation of it.

Again, I sewed the pieces down (noticing along the way that I had forgotten one leaf, and adding it) and then did the embroidery as outlined in the instructions. Well, that was the plan at least, but the picture was so tiny and “unreadable” that I ended up doing most of the embroidery freehand. Winging it, so to speak…

Making the finished embroidered panels up into little bags should have been the easiest step, but it was oddly frustrating and nothing worked properly the first time around. The zippers are a mess. The lining of the “Bird and Blossom” catches and the ends of both zippers are not properly sewn into the top seam. Also, the embroidery is not bad considering my level of (in)experience, but I’m not as happy with it as I could have been. So I’m still deciding whether to keep both of the bags for myself, or give one or both away. What do you think? Here are the finished objects!

BirdStrawFO

BlossomFO

April 1960: Gay Goslings

Version 2 “Cheerful goslings make gay kitchen ideas” — who could resist? There are patterns for a serving glove and a felt tea cosy, neither of which I particularly needed, but the tea-cosy pattern is just about the right size for an iPad case. So this became the modern version.

As always, the pattern came from a transfer that is no longer commercially available, but since the appliqué was so simple, it wasn’t a problem. I used the good old pencil-grid-transfer method that had already worked so well with January’s leaf cushion, and it worked fine.

I had never done appliqué before, but it was really quite easy, especially with felt, so this was a great beginner project. The eyes, wings and feet are embroidered in simple satin stitch and blanket stitch. There were supposed to be yellow stem-stitch outlines around the eyes, but I tried it and it made my poor innocent gosling look kind of demonic, so I stuck with plain black dots. I made it up with a scrap of fun blue cotton print for lining (Geese… In… Space…!) and a simple closure made out of a bit of twisted yarn cord and a sparkly white button.

Everything worked great and the whole thing took only about 5 hours total to make, including sewing all the seams by hand, as I didn’t have my sewing machine on hand at the time. Definitely a change from the never-ending John’s new pullover! Now I have the gayest, warmest, best-dressed, space-age spring fever iPad that anyone could wish for and am very happy.

goslingsfo1