#robert owen

Piecework Magazine, Fall 2021

This issue has the mix of historical articles and historical projects that we have come to expect from Piecework which treats all of the needlework skills. I am featuring here the projects offered in this issues. On the cover, you see the reproduction of an embroidered-ticking notecase from an 1868 issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book for which Colleen Formby offers instructions on how to make one for yourself. She and Karin J. Bohleke wrote the accompanying article which explains how striped cotton ticking pieces of fabric were beribboned and embroidered over to create small bags of all kinds and even shoe tops.

The blue knitted Corra Linn shawl by Isabella Rossi combines simple garter stitch with a lace edging in the style of the shawls worn by the women who worked in early textile factories. And er article on Robert Owen explains his attempts to create safer and more moral, to his mind, places to work in the 19th Century at the New Lanark Mills.

The beautiful blue embroidery was created by Marion Brookes using a transfer from a new book called Embroiderers Guild Transfers Collections by Annette Collinge. An excerpt from the book is included along with a traceable illustration for that blue embroidery, and an example of the same motif done in greens, yellow and pinks. The book itself holds some 90 motifs.

There are many more articles as the cover hints, everything from a family crazy quilt signed by all its makers in embroidery thread to an article on May Morris of the English Arts and Crafts movement to a piece on textile traditions of Egypt.