These embroidered cloths are from this home in Dunblane, Scotland. The same people responsible for the horse shoe jumper posted some time back (pictured below).
Young women were required to have a basic repertoire of needlework skills and produced embellished tableware, bedding, undergarments and children’s wear for their families. Starting before marriage with their ‘hope’ chest and with school samplers, these amazing skills we now cherish.
I’ve always been hugely inspired by what my foremothers considered the ordinary, basic skills of their domestic life.
We watched our grandmothers and the old women knitting and ‘doing’ the whole time and thought nothing of it, not realizing the incredible structural engineering and intricacy of such ordinary crafts. Obviously we do understand it.
My ‘if you were stuck on an island and had to choose one book’ is the Encyclopedia of Needlework by Therese de Dillmont
