What I call a stall

When I spied the Judith Mansfield Books stand at the Knitting & Stitching Show in the pretty northern spa town of Harrogate this weekend, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven...

Just a teeny part of the stall

Packed with secondhand books and magazines about sewing, knitting, crochet, weaving, embroidery, cross stitch and printing, not to mention the boxes of old sewing patterns, this was a vintage craft book collector's dream come true.

Wonderwall

Or it would have been if I'd not been working. I was hoping for an hour off from teaching workshops to have a proper rummage, but my classes were all booked up and all I could manage was a dash to Judith's stand just as the show was closing. Judith herself wasn't there but I had a chat to her husband, who told me they don't have a website or sell online, but they do have a seven-day-a-week stall at the Hebden Bridge Antiques Market I feel a special trip back to Yorkshire coming on!

School library scoop

I thought my eyes were deceiving me when I happened upon a massive collection of 60s, 70s, 80s (and one 30s) craft books in my local bric-a-brac market yesterday. All from a school library in East Dulwich in south east London – and at £1 a pop, I bought as many as I could carry.

Sadly, for reasons of shelf space, I had to leave behind titles on macramé, plaiting, braiding, soft toy making and other skillz just a little out of the scope of my interests, but this little lot will keep me going for a while. Watch this space for some of the highlights.

Number 73

All that's missing is a bike chained to the railings

I love the way blackwork, the monochrome counted-thread technique that was all the rage way back in fifteen-hundred-and-something, can look so modern, like a pen and ink illustration – and the patchwork effect of areas of different black and white geometric patterns side by side.

In Creative Needlecraft (Sundial Books 1979), author Lynette de Demme had the brilliant idea of depicting one house in blackwork (above) and in three other stitching techniques:

Colour embroidery, blackwork and a bit of applique

To me, no73 looks just like some of the grand Victorian houses around Highgate, north London...

Gritty realism in applique

I'd love to see these lined up together as if they were neighbouring houses on the same street.

Close up on the drawn fabric work version

How nice the way the qualities of each technique emphasise different features of the building – the drainpipe, the balcony, the tiled front steps and three square decorative panels towards the top of the house.

If you'd like to sew your own house in black and white, you'll find a basic guide to blackwork here, and part 2 here.

1950s Swedish stitchery

*UPDATE! To see more images from this book, check out my new post More Swedish Stitchery*

Victor Pettersons Bokindustr Aktiebolag, Stockholm 1954

I picked up this sweet 1954 Swedish sewing book, Hemslöjdens Hardarbeten at Greenwich Clocktower Market this morning. I don't understand a word of it – even the title, which appears to translate as 'Handiwork Handicraft'.

But who cares – look at the pictures!

Square sunflower

White on black

Lovebirds

Horses under a strawberry tree

A sudden burst of colour

Peacock pairs

Chapman's clipper

Just wanted to share that with you!

*UPDATE! To see more images from this book, check out my new post More Swedish Stitchery* 

I *heart* needlepoint

Happy Valentine's Day! My gift to you is this heart-motif needlepoint belt:



I love the way the three hearts (repeated twice on the way round) are all different.
The pattern came from here:



And here's the belt in action:



It's a good first project if you're new to the ladylike art of needlepoint, so if you want to make like a character in a Jane Austen novel and give it a go, click here, here and here to find
out how.