#CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--GUEST AUTHOR AND CRAFTER LEA WAIT

Darning Sampler

Lea Wait is the author of the Mainely Needlepoint series, the Shadows Antique Print mystery series and historical novels for ages 8 and up. Living and Writing on the Coast of Maine is her series of essays on the writer’s life. Learn more about Lea and her books at her website. 

Have You Fixed your Winklehawks and Barn-Doors?

Yes – in the world of sewing there really are such things. In the early nineteenth century and before, fabric was valuable. Fabrics were either woven at home, which took time, or purchased at great cost. So when a piece of clothing was torn, repairs were essential.

Repairs should be invisible, so the clothing could continue to be worn. When the fabric was so worn it could no longer be repaired, it was either unwoven (as with wool) and re-used, or, at minimum, re-purposed, into hooked or braided rugs, quilts, or clothes for children.

Learning to mend clothing and strengthen weak fabric, was an essential skill for young women of most classes. Either at home or in schools for young ladies, girls were taught how to mend, or darn, fabrics of various textures.

And if you’re wondering – “winklehawks” were L-shaped tears, and “barn-doors” were holes. An experienced stitcher could mend tears and holes by perfectly simulating the cloth’s weave, so the mend was invisible. (The most difficult problems to repair were corners, where not many threads were left to work with.)

To learn these skills, girls practiced on “darning samplers.” An instructor would tear cloth in various ways, and the young lady’s task was to repair each hole or tear so it could not be seen. Once this exercise was completed to the satisfaction of the instructor, the girl might add a little embroidery to her work, and sometimes the result was framed.

Very different from the usual samplers done to illustrate mastery of embroidery stitches, these darning samplers, particularly done in Holland and Great Britain, can sometimes be found at antique shows or auctions, and are examples of the practical arts of the past.

Thread the Halls

A Mainely Needlepoint Mystery, book 6

There’s little time for Angie Curtis and her beau, Patrick West to linger under the mistletoe. Angie is determined that this should be a perfect Christmas – and so is Patrick’s mother, a Hollywood actress who envisions a Maine Christmas as a Currier & Ives print.  Patrick and Angie work to set the stage for the holiday, but no one scripts the addition of a body in a snow drift to the holiday festivities.

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(Click here for a free prequel to Thread the Halls.) 

#CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--GUEST AUTHOR LEA WAIT ON ANTIQUE EMBROIDERY

USA Today bestselling author Lea Wait lives in Maine, where she writes the (so far) 5-book Mainely Needlepoint mystery series and the 8-book Shadows Antique Print series, as well as historical novels for young people. Learn more about Lea and her books at her website where you can find links to a free prequels of her books.

Old Embroidery That Tells Stories

Growing up as a fourth generation antique dealer, and then as a dealer myself for 35+ years, I sometimes saw embroideries that had been treasured not only as decorative works of art, but as illustrations of family stories.

For example, some samplers didn’t just have a verse and several alphabets. Some preserved family records. The stitchers embroidered names of their family on trees or more often (considering the 10-18 children I’ve seen listed), included names and birth (and sometimes death) dates and bordered the names with embroidered flowers.

Mourning embroideries usually picture a tomb shaded by one or more weeping willows, and several people (usually identifiable as family members) grieving next to the tomb, which is engraved with one or more names.

But not all “story” embroideries were sad. Patchwork memory quilts were sometimes given to new mothers, new brides, or young women heading west. Organized by friends of the recipient, the patches were often from garments that had been worn by the stitcher, who also embroidered the patch before the quilt was assembled, often at a quilting bee. Some simple quilts had patches embroidered with the names of those giving it, perhaps women in a church group, or young women who’d gone to school together.

(As a side note, today, at least in Maine, a popular library fundraiser is to cut quilt pieces and send them to authors, who sign and return them. The names are then embroidered over by volunteers, the quilt assembled, and then auctioned off.)

One of the most beautiful quilts I’ve ever seen was pieced with velvets and silks, and each piece was embroidered by a different person. The skill of the embroiderers varied considerably. I’d guess that some were very young, while others were very accomplished. Although we’ll never know what the exact message of the quilt was, an educated guess was that it was given to a new bride who was leaving the town where she grew up – probably a seaport.

 

The embroideries of the patches appeared to be memories that the recipient could take with her. A clipper ship. Strawberries. Holly. A pine tree. A dog. A cat. A house. Daffodils. Queen Anne’s Lace. A cardinal. A chickadee. A music note.

  

The quilt pictured has embroidery on the patches … and the embroidery linking the patches is designed to look like seaweed. (Collecting and preserving seaweed was a popular Victorian pastime for young women. But that’s another subject!)

Another memory quilt I’ve seen was made from the clothing of a union soldier who’d served in the Civil War, and the flag he’d carried. Embroideries on it included his dates of service, the battles he’d fought in, his unit, and the states he’d traveled to. It was pieced and embroidered by his wife, who wrote an explanation for the patches, which was saved with the quilt.

Unfortunately, not all quilts have legends.

But perhaps, the stories we made up about them are almost as interesting.

Tightening the Threads, A Mainely Needlepoint Mystery

I

n the coastal town of Haven Harbor, blood runs thicker than water—and just as freely…

Antique dealer Sarah Byrne has never unspooled the truth about her past to anyone—not even friend and fellow Mainely Needlepointer Angie Curtis. But the enigmatic Aussie finally has the one thing she’s searched for all her life—family. And now she and long-lost half-brother, Ted Lawrence, a wealthy old artist and gallery owner in town, are ready to reveal their secret connection…

Ted’s adult children are suspicious of their newfound aunt Sarah—especially after Ted, in declining health, announces plans to leave her his museum-worthy heirloom paintings. So when Ted is poisoned to death during a lobster bake, everyone assumes she’s guilty. If Sarah and Angie can’t track down the real murderer in time, Sarah’s bound to learn how delicate—and deadly—family dynamics can truly be…

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#CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--GUEST AUTHOR LEA WAIT

The Loara Standish Sampler

Lea Wait is the author of the Mainely Needlepoint series (Twisted Threads, Threads of Evidence and, coming in December, Thread and Gone.) She also writes the Shadows Antique Print mystery series and historical novels for ages 8 and up. Living and Writing on the Coast of Maine is her series of essays on the writer’s life. Learn more about Lea and her books at her website. 

Being able to sew a fine seam and embroider were for centuries considered basic skills for women. In the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries needlepoint, the most decorative of these arts, was done primarily by wealthy women and the men hired by them to create tapestries, bed hangings, and elaborately stitched clothing.

In seventeenth through nineteenth century North America, tapestries were not common, but before central heating, bed hangings were common in wealthier households. And as in Europe, girls were expected to demonstrate their dexterity with needles at an early age, and often did this by stitching a sampler using various embroidery stitches, often including an alphabet, a scene, and, almost always, a devout verse.

Possibly the first sampler stitched in the New World was done by Loara Standish (pictured above,) daughter of Miles Standish, in 1640. It is now displayed in Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

By the nineteenth century, embroidery skills were taught in girls’ schools on the east coast, and teachers designed elaborate samplers for their students to stitch, frame, and give to their parents to thank them for the gift of an education.

One of my favorite sampler verses was stitched in 1827 by Mary Chase, age eleven, in Augusta, Maine:  “Let virtue prove your never fading bloom, For mental beauty will survive the tomb.”

Girls like Mary Chase inspired my Mainely Needlepoint mystery series. (Twisted Threads, the first in the series, was published in January, 2015.)

In an unexpected twist for a craft mystery series, my protagonist, Angie Curtis, is just learning to do needlepoint. But her grandmother is a master, and has started Mainely Needlepoint, a business that employs a variety of men and women in Haven Harbor, Maine, to do custom needlepoint and identify and restore antique needlepoint. (In Threads of Evidence, the second in the series, clues in needlepoint they are restoring give clues to a mysterious death in 1970.)

I love the (often depressing) verses on samplers, so I’ve included a verse, or a quotation about needlepoint, at the beginning of every chapter in this series.

For example, this verse was embroidered by Lydia Draper, age thirteen, in 1742:

           

Nothing is so sure as Death and

Nothing is so uncertain as the

Time when I may be too old to Live,

But I can never be too young to Die.

I will live every hour as if I was to die the next.

What better sentiment for a mystery series?

Threads of Evidence

It's hard to imagine anything bad ever happening in picturesque Haven Harbor, Maine--until a famous face rolls into town and unthreads some very dark secrets. . .

Angie Curtis and the Mainely Needlepointers are all too familiar with the Gardener estate. The crumbling Victorian mansion, known as "Aurora," has been sitting vacant for nearly twenty-five years--and some say it's haunted by the ghost of Jasmine Gardener, the teenage girl who died there in 1970 under mysterious circumstances...

Harbor Haven is abuzz with excitement when Hollywood actress Skye West decides to buy Aurora and sell off its furnishings. And Angie is intrigued when Skye asks her to appraise the estate's sizable collection of needlepoint pictures. But the more she examines the pieces, the more they seem to point toward Jasmine's murder--and the murderer--and it's up to her to stitch the clues together. . .

              

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