Features / Projects

Monograms for Handkerchiefs to Embroider
Dress up contemporary or period attire with our elegant monogrammed handkerchiefs.

Commend Me to a Knitting Wife: Knitting during
the American Civil War and A Civil War–Era Sontag to Knit
by Colleen Formby
The author’s research will enlighten anyone interested in re-creating period knitted goods. The sontag was an article of women’s clothing worn for warmth in mid-nineteenth-century America.

Patriotic Toil: Knitting Socks for Civil War Soldiers and Civil War Socks to Knit
by Karin Timour
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), wives, mothers, and the girls left behind worried, prayed—and knitted as they never had before. Both original instructions and modern interpretations are provided for knitting Union and Confederate socks.

A Pinkeep to Embroider
by Elisabeth Shure
The tree motif on this pinkeep is adapted from those seen on eighteenth and nineteenth-century Nantucket, Massachusetts, needlework samplers.

A Seventeenth-Century Undershirt to Knit
by Mary Merrill , Anne Seamans, Betty Shannon , and Adele Harvey
Re-create an undershirt, probably worn over a shirt and under an outer garment, based on one in the collection of the Museum of London.

A Baby’s Gown to Smock by Allyne Holland and
Mom’s Smocking by Emily - Jane Hills Orford
Step-by-step instructions for creating a stunning silk baby’s gown embellished with hand smocking and an author’s reflection on the smocking worked by her mother.

ON THE WEB: Great-Aunt Belle’s Buttons Janie Benander Great-Aunt Belle had a passion for buttons - she had amassed thousands of them in her lifetime and carefully sewed them onto fabric for safe-keeping. See some of the selected buttons from Great Aunt Belle's collection.
A Punto Antico Biscornu Pincushion to Stitch by Jeanine Robinson Punto Antico (antique stitch), a type of Italian drawn-thread work, is thought to have its origins in the Levant. The geometric shapes are said to be inspired by the Arab influence that dominated the island of Sicily for centuries. Numerous traces of this embroidery style are found throughout Italy depicted in paintings and portraits dating back to the fourteenth century. Today, Punto Antico is used in embroideries all over the Italian peninsula. (For more on Punto Antico, visit pieceworkmagazine.com/go/articles/puntoantico.)
The Story in a Dress by Suzanne Smith Arney Much can be read in a dress’s fabric and construction. Nancy Kirk, a teacher, textile scholar, appraiser, collector, president of the Quilt Heritage Foundation, and owner of The Kirk Collection in Omaha, Nebraska, reads fabrics to try to unravel the stories behind them.

Coming Next Issue

Deadline: April 1, 2009