Table of contents for Winter 2023 in PieceWork

I can pinpoint the time when I first succumbed to the irresistible allure of needlework. I think I realized when I was about four or five years old that making potholders on looms and doll dresses on knitting spools was creative and empowering: I could select the yarn (soft), the color (pink, please), the style (simple—I had no patience), and I could create them myself (or so I believed). I still revel for a moment in the pride that comes when I finish making something, although that pride is usually quickly supplanted by the excitement of envisioning a new project. Those early childhood masterpieces were just the beginning of a lifetime of stitching pleasure. When did you first realize that needlecrafting was integral to your well-being? In this issue, we…

My colorwork mittens were inspired by a pair of mittens knitted by Ruby Ana Holton (1895–1977), an Iowan of Norwegian ancestry. The mittens are now in the collection of Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah, Iowa. Taking its name from the term Norwegian immigrants used to describe America to their loved ones in Norway—vesterheim, or “western home”—the museum is dedicated to telling the stories of Norwegian immigrants to the United States through its collection of historic and contemporary textiles, carved and painted Norwegian furniture and household items, and fine art. Ruby Holton's Selbu inspired mittens are but one example of the many colorful, patterned mittens in Vesterheim's collection. Traditional Selbu mittens had the following components: a gender-specific cuff; a mitten hand with the front side and palm in different patterns; a…

When I started my rug-hooking journey 25 years ago, antique hooked rugs were one of the biggest influences in my color and design choices. Their naïve subject matter and folk-art quality spark my imagination even now. The rug hooker of the mid-tolate nineteenth century made rugs to cover and warm her bare floors because commercial carpeting was not affordable. She may have desired simplicity, so she drew out rudimentary designs. Perhaps she wanted to commemorate a special event, an animal or favorite pet, or she was simply inspired by her garden or the floral pattern on a porcelain teacup. Working on coarse feed sacks or burlap (which became plentiful in the mid-1800s), a newly hooked rug found a place of honor in the parlor where visitors were entertained and families…

What could be cozier for a baby than to be wrapped in a luxurious cabled blanket inspired by heritage Irish knitting? This baby blanket is knit in a cabled pattern that would be equally at home on an Aran sweater. The traditional way of knitting ribs on Inis Oírr island is known in Irish as lúibín chorrach or a twisted rib. This is achieved by knitting into the back of the knit stitches to give the work better structure and elasticity. For sweaters, this allows the rib to fit snugly at the waist and cuffs. I have used this heritage rib in the side borders of this blanket, but all the knit stitches in the cabled part of the blanket design are knit in the regular way. MATERIALS ◆ Studio…

1 The Allure of Aran A Twisted Picot shares their love of all things Aran with this rustic yarn from Ireland. Studio Donegal's Irish Heather is available in 10 colors and 100 gram skeins containing 165 yards each. The yarn is a wonderful weight for your next quick cable project. atwistedpicot.com 2 Hooked on Knitting Control your tension with this Portuguese knitting pin from Lacis. Pin the hook to your shirt and run the yarn through it. Talk about getting attached to your project! lacis.com 3 A Helping Hook Joining motifs while tatting can be a struggle. Simplify this by using a shuttle with a hook. This Aerlit shuttle from Handy Hands comes with interchangeable bobbins for easy color shifts and a tiny hook to make picot joins easier. hhtatting.com…

Barbara G. Walker is lauded by countless knitters as the author of seven of our most valuable knitting titles. After college, Barbara made it her annual practice to choose a new field of study and haunt the Library of Congress stacks to exhaust all available information on her chosen topic. Her first published works were the breakthrough Treasury of Knitting quartet, which each contain many hundreds of stitch patterns, and at the time filled a large void in knitting literature. The Treasury encompasses stitch instructions in myriad techniques; there are no patterns for garments in this series. In addition to her knitting titles, she also wrote 14 additional books on a wide variety of non-knitting subjects, including The Book of Sacred Stones, The Skeptical Feminist, Restoring the Goddess, Belief and…

Ann Lowe (1898–1981) was born in Clayton, Alabama, into a family of skilled dressmakers. As Black women in the American South, Lowe's foremothers survived enslavement and worked hard to establish themselves as respected seamstresses. In 1966, Lowe recounted to a reporter that her great-grandmother made gowns for the women of her enslaver's family. Lowe's grandmother Georgia Thompkins turned the dressmaking work she did during her enslavement into a thriving business that helped support her family after her husband, General Cole, purchased freedom for her and for her daughter Janie (Lowe's mother) in 1860. Georgia and Janie designed gowns for the elite white women of Montgomery, Alabama, and they trained Lowe in sewing and dressmaking from a young age. A DESIGNING WOMAN Lowe showed immense design talent and an early affinity…

Cozy Cables Inspired Knitting Patterns to Warm the Body and Soul Kalurah Hudson Salem, MA: Page Street Publishing, 2022, Paperback, 176 pages, $23.99. ISBN 9781645676799. Hook, Prod, Punch, Tuft Creative Techniques with Fabric and Fibre Lynn Stein New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023, Paperback, 160 pages, $28.00. ISBN 9781789940886. Knitwear Workshop Designs Duets and Inspirations Shirley Paden Self-published, 2021, Hardcover, 316 pages, $60.00. ISBN 978-1737119494. Ann Lowe American Couturier Elizabeth Way, Author, and Heather Hodge, Laura Mina, Margaret Powell, Katya Roelse, and Katherine Sahmel, contributors New York: Rizzoli Publishing, 2023, Hardcover, 208 pages, $55. ISBN 9780847873142. The Shoemaker's Stitch Mochi Embroideries of Gujarat in the TAPI Collection Shilpa Shah, Author, and Rosemary Crill, Editor New Delhi, India: Niyogi Books, 2022, Hardcover, 220 pages, $120. ISBN 9789391125455.…

In the summer of 2021, I was asked by the team at the Winterthur Museum to make a reproduction of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy's wedding dress for an upcoming exhibition that would feature the couturier Ann Lowe. Although the original dress (which is a culmination of Lowe's work) is not part of the Winterthur exhibition, the inclusion of a reproduction and the documentation of the process were commissioned to highlight essential elements of Lowe's design career. THE PAINSTAKING RESEARCH In January 2022, I spent three days in the archives at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, Massachusetts, evaluating, measuring, photographing, sketching, and taking notes on the dress. The documentation was completed as the dress lay on a large worktable. The skirt was so big that I had to sketch and…

During the Victorian era, the white daisy was thought to signify new beginnings, innocence, loyalty, purity, and the ability to keep secrets. Thus, this flower was popular in bouquets, nosegays, and on cards for a new baby or special friend. This daisy design, which is the first in a series, is based on a beautiful pelerine in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is very versatile. Silk-ribbon embroidery would enhance a great number of items: framed pieces, pillow inserts, quilt blocks, crazy-quilt designs, curtain tiebacks, box tops, clothing, table linens, lampshades, doll clothing and accessories, hat decorations, jewelry, bridal accessories, basket trim, sachets, and pincushions, or perhaps even a modern-day pelerine. The use of soft, lustrous silk ribbons and threads adds to the rich beauty of these…

What do dressmakers and coal miners have in common? How did one of the most dangerous professions of the late 1800s and early 1900s lead to “pleasant, dignified” careers that allowed women to support themselves? And most importantly: why has so much of it been lost to time? In response to the often-deadly work of mining, Pennsylvania passed the Mine Safety Act of 1885, which demanded miners pass examinations on mine safety to work in the field. While this may have seemed like a sensible plan on paper, in practice, it failed to consider several practical impediments. First was the matter of language. Many of the miners spoke little to no English. The modern United States was built on the back of immigrant labor and mining was no exception. Spoken…