Quilt for November

This quilt makes me think of November and colder days so it always comes out this time of the year. The creams, oranges, browns and greys in the prints remind me of increasingly stark landscapes as well as warm hot drinks and seasonal foods.

I have, unfortunately, lost all of my documentation about the materials I used but believe that the medallion and most of the prints came from a line of reproduction cotton prints by Makower based on an original mid-19^th century quilt. I purchased them in the mid-1990s, and added the cream and brown miniature leaf clusters’ and bouquets’ prints as fillers and the border. The reverse material, by a third unknown manufacturer, is not a reproduction print but more of an homage, all in one place, to various styles of 19^th century prints.

This quilt was entirely hand pieced and hand quilted. It measures 58” square.

Early Winter Knitting

'L'Art  Ménager', October 1927

Fontaine, Anne-Marie

French

Magazine cover

Colour lithograph

Private Collection

Credit: Bridgeman Art Library*

The cold weather is upon us so it is nice to sit by a fire and knit. This cover reminds me of me as I have model ships about the house. I have been also mostly knitting socks on four needles lately as I had to give my aching hands a rest from the ultra-thin, sometimes, almost invisible knitting needles of my historic projects. Hence the limited amount of reproduction knitting on this blog in the past few months. There are still a substantial number of reproduction wips though, including a few that need to be ripped out and started again for various reasons. I will be discussing a few of them here. Until then, however, back to those socks which are going right into use these days – a good incentive to prevent Second Sock Syndrome.

*http://www.bridgemanart.com/en-US/search/artist/26065/fontaine-anne-marie-fl-1927

Porcupine Knitting for a Purse – Large Purse Finished!

I have completed the larger version of this purse, using Sally Pointer’s Wicked Woollens’s pattern* on 2.00mm/US 0 needles, with Knit Picks’s Palette in Ivy, Currant, Blush, Mustard, Peony and Blue Note Heather. As mentioned in my first post** about these purses, most of the colours in this purse are faithful to a 19^th century purse in the V&A but I changed a green to currant and the white accent colour to a blue.

After the purse is knit, it is turned inside out. I don’t like beads so there will be none on this one nor on the smaller purse still in progress.

There were lots of ends to weave in.

This purse measures 9 ½” from the tip of a bottom point to the top of a top point, and 4” across in width. The actual cavity, from the gathered bottom to the drawstring row at the top is 6 ¾”.  The little points stand out about ¾” from the body of the purse.

*http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/two-victorian-purses

**http://historyknits.blogspot.com/2013/09/porcupine-knitting-for-purse.html

Famous Knitters – Gene Tierney

Gene Tierney (November 19, 1920 – November 6, 1991)

Not only is she knitting but she is wearing a beautiful Aran.

Here she is in a very fetching rain hat in the title role of one of my favourite films, Laura (1944)

Famous Knitters – Grace Kelly

Grace Kelly (November 12, 1929 – September 14, 1982)

Aptly named, and always supremely elegant - her film wardrobes were usually stunning.

Here with Celeste Holm (one of my favourite actresses but I cannot find an image of her knitting, and I don't even know if she was a knitter.) 

Grace Kelly was a real knitter.

Here with Clark Gable.