I have decided that I am finished with my February TIF piece. The original plan was to stitch two flour sack dish towels, that I have hand dyed peach and pale blue, with motifs adapted from designs on the cabinet and machine of my great-grandmother’s treadle sewing machine.
After an initial slow start in dyeing where the first two towels turned out bright blue and bright orange, I got the next two in the right color range. I transferred the design I had drawn based on the raised work on the cabinet to the center of the peach towel and began stitching. Now I remember why you use cross-stitch or something like holbein to do towels. It’s really hard to get the back to look nice.
While I had planned to stitch this motif in repetition across the entire bottom of the towel, I’ve decided to stop with just one central motif. I have not been very happy with the way it’s turned out. I think it’s pretty, but if done over I would use different stitches so the back would look better. It’s not awful, mind you, but I’m a perfectionist. Need I say more?
My remembering (the February TIF theme) for this piece was remembering stitching flour sack dish towels as a child, combined with learning how to sew on both treadle and electric sewing machines in seventh grade Home Ec. Class.
I am fortunate to have received my great-grandmother’s treadle sewing machine which is over one hundred years old, and would still work, if I put it all together and tried it. It was used as the inspiration for the towel embroidery design.
I didn’t know my great-grandmother well, who although her name was Evelyn, always went by “Lady.” I very slightly remember her being rather stern, but I don’t know if she really was. I remember my mother telling me that Lady was into health food before it was popular, making homemade whole wheat bread, that I don’t recall liking much at the time, though I love it now. I think I was in first or second grade when Lady died. She was one of the many women in my extended family who sew, quilt, and/or do needlework.
Yesterday, while finishing up the stitching I also was reminded of the grape vines that grew over the fence from the yard next door to one of the houses we lived in when I was little. We used to sneak grapes off the vine and eat them. They weren’t very good.
The colors from this month’s TIF project brought to mind one of my WIVSPs. That’s Work in Verrrrry Slow Progress.
This is a tea cozy I started in…umm…probably 1991. That means Pre-Seminary. It was for the third step in the then Master Craftsman Program in Quiltmaking through the Embroiderer’s Guild of America. It was to be a utilitarian piece, combining a complementary color scheme with one or more special techniques such as string piecing, crazy quilting, trapunto, etc. 
I’m thinking of starting in on it again, because I really do like it. This side still needs some embroidery, then there is a whole other side to do the same way. Then the sides will be quilted and then put together with a big thick cording covered with pleated or ruched peach fabric. And the whole thing will be lined. Pretty ambitious, I know, but it’ll be gorgeous when finished.
Oh BTW. That blue towel? I’m going to save it for another project along with the “Go, Broncos”-colored other two. On to March.
Just Enough Time 