Aunty Grace's Stitching Legacy

I have written some time ago about my grandmother's stitching and also about my mother's stash. For some time I have intended to put on record the legacy I owe to my mother's sister, Emily Grace Molloy (nee Ray), my Aunty Grace.

Background
Aunty Grace was born in England in 1915, ten years before my mother's birth. She had a brother, Albert, two years older than her. Their father went to WWI in 1914 and did not see Grace until she was 2 years old. Although their mother came from a large supportive family, times were hard. After the War, employment was hard to come by. Their father got a job in an engineering factory, but it went under in 1922. The family moved to Bulphin, near Grays in Essex, where their parents acted as caretakers to the church and church school.

Grace and her brother went to school in Bulphin, where this photo was taken in about 1926. Grace is wearing a dress knitted by her mother. All clothes were made at home and Grace learnt early on to sew, knit and crochet.

The family migrated to Sydney in 1929 - on the last migrant ship before Australia suspended migration due to the Great Depression. Life was very tough for several years. Grace went into service and, after several years, worked in a nursery in Mascot, then at Johnson and Johnson before meeting Sid Molloy, her future husband, who was in the Australian Navy. They were married in 1941.

Aunty Grace lived in Mascot until the family moved to Norahville, north of Sydney around 1959. There she was heavily involved in the local community, especially the RSL. She moved to Perth in Western Australia to live with her daughter, after the death of Uncle Sid in 2000. She died in Perth in 2005.

Stitching
I remember Aunty Grace, like my mother and grandmother, making all her own clothes, and clothes for her daughter. She was fashion-conscious and liked to dress well. I remember her farewelling us at a station in a floral dress she had made - of bubble nylon with a full circle skirt and cross-over bodice. She had a good collection of  Glory Box items, always on display in her house (as were my mother's in ours).


The difference between my mother's and Aunty Grace's was in the quality of the crocheted edges. Aunty Grace was the acknowledged Queen of Crochet. My mother was a very basic crocheter and even their mother, who was estranged from Grace, had nothing but praise for Grace's crochet ("Grace is the one who can crochet!" I hear her saying) and did not attempt to compete with her.

Wedding present table mats

She crocheted table mats for me as a wedding present at my request. And a doiley when I moved into my first flat.

Her work is still lovely.










She gave away far more than she kept - to local groups and charities, to friends and relatives.

The photos here are from the collection of my cousin in Perth.

Crochet wasn't her only output. She dressed dolls, made bow-ties, ties, hats and baby outfits for many, many people and causes.

Other Crafts
Stitching wasn't the only craft women in my family engaged in. My mother took up painting, my grandmother hooked rugs. Aunty Grace learned and practised leatherwork and copperwork. Two examples of her copperwork survive.

I am really grateful to have grown up in a family in which women took it for granted that they could (indeed must) make beautiful and useful things. I love looking at Aunty Grace's work, remembering her many kindnesses to me and drawing on the confidence she, her mother and her sister gave me.

Hexagon Centre Embroidery - Stars

One of the attractions to the hexagon quilt was the possibility of embroidering the centre of some of the 'flowers' using Mary Corbett's notion of stitch fun. I enjoyed playing with these stitches in the denim bags and thought it would be fun to play in a similar way with the quilt.

I decided to embroider a simple motif on any coloured 'flower' that had a plain fabric hexagon in the centre. I used the stitches I had already practised on the denim bags and added a few.



Hexagons really lend themselves to this treatment because of their shape. Whereas Mary Corbet begins many of her stitches by marking out dots in a circle, the hexagon provides six points to use without needing to mark the fabric. This was particularly so with star stitch, which I hadn't tried before.

 As you can see, I got right into the stars. They reminded me of a mathematics teacher I had in high school, who, at the end of one year taught us to do 'mathematical sewing' using a needle and thread and card. We marked holes along axes on the cards and then stitched from one axis to another, the threads forming webs and resulting in parabola and other shapes.

This felt very similar.

Much of this fabric is from dresses I  made for  my daughters or grand-daughters.

















The stars and checks are from a piece of Christmas fabric and the red carnations fabric came as part of a 2013 Christmas gift - in the wrapping for one of Hagar Arnon Elbaz's fabulous necklaces.












I am pleased with progress on the embroidery - I have embroidered different things on other centres - some examples coming soon.

Winter birds progress

I have now finished one side of the Winter Birds table topper. The pattern is repeated on all four sides.
I settled on satin stitch for the big leaves and couched straight stitch for the pine-needles, but wasn't happy with either the satin stitch or the lattice I had experimented with for the snow.

My next step was to try split back stitch. I was much happier with this than with the satin stitch.

Although I left my earlier experiments with the leaves and with the snow lattice in place, like a sampler, I thought the satin stitch snow so horrible I pulled it out.

I replaced it with split back stitch going horizontally, rather than vertically - and liked that one best of all.

I am going to leave the lattice example and the vertical one in - treat it as a sampler. I might try a double layer of satin stitch in the next quarter - horizontal over vertical perhaps.




I also worked the breasts of the birds in split back stitch, but the wings in satin stitch.


I have a few more variations in mind to try on the other three sides!

Warrior shorts

I found a book of Scottish stories of the feats of Finn MacCoull for my grandson Fionn for Christmas. It has wonderful pen sketch illustrations, including one of the warrior Fionn MacCoull standing on the sea-shore defying a monster. As soon as I saw it I thought it would make a great embroidery on a pair of jeans or shorts.

I photocopied, enlarged, traced and simplified the illustration, then transferred the result to a water soluble stabiliser. As much as I prefer to work directly on the fabric, the dark, heavy denim makes that very difficult.

 I worked the basic outline using the stabiliser, then removed it and improvised the rest.

The illustration has a great sense of storm, wind, defiance and power that I wanted to capture in the stitching.

The hard thing was knowing when to stop - to leave it as a sketch, rather than fill in every part and risk losing the sense of movement.

Fionn recognised it immediately as a warrior (phew!).

I like embroidering denim in this way and it makes a good boy present.

Cowboy Shirt

Jim bought Fionn a very nice blue chambray shirt for his birthday and asked if I could embroider something suitably western on the pockets.

I dug out the book I bought at A Song for the Horse Nation exhibition at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC. It has lovely examples of motifs that I hoped I could use one day.

leather jacket in exhibition

 I drew a horse and rider based on an embroidered jacket in the exhibition. The original had two two riders - more than I thought I could manage on the pocket. It did remind me of the Rolf Harris song about two little boys sharing a horse.

I used threads I had in my stash - indeed, some I had in my needles left from other recent projects in ochry sorts of colours!


Stitching inside the already made pocket was a bit awkward, but not too bad. I used mostly stem stitch with the odd french knot for eyes.

On the second pocket I made a star, also based on a repeated design from the book.

I really like these simple, fairly quick embellishments.

Native Colour Embroidery

Having bought the kit for Bev Stayner's "Native Colour" project in Inspirations 73, I have been pushing ahead to finish it before Issue 74 comes out - trying to at least not add to the backlog of projects I have lined up to do. I am very keen on this project, as it has some great techniques for creating Australian native plants, and I'd like to do more projects using them.

The first interesting bit for me was the method used to trace the design. The linen to be embroidered is backed with calico on to which the design has been traced in reverse. Sections are progressively outlined in running stitch on the calico side, then the fabric turned in the hoop and the outlined section worked on the right side.


I have used this technique before on simpler projects with less turning  - but it worked well here.

The first bit of work was on the wattle - stems and leaves in whipped double running stitch and open chain stitch. Then you add ghiordes-knot flowers before moving on to the bottlebrush - also ghiordes knots, but this time not cut.

It is very motivating to see each bit take on dimension and a recognisable texture.

The gum-blossom is a pleasing mixture of straight stitch and a section of cut-but-not-fluffed ghiordes knots. The gum leaves have an inspired red line against the main stem.







The grevillea, however,was the best fun to do, 

The curving stems are topped with olivy-brown French knots and then red  drizzle stitch between them, creating the spidery, somewhat chaotic sense of grevillea opening.



The piece de resistance was the full-blown grevillea created by what is in effect, French knots on stalks.
Mine is denser than it should be - I just got carried away making these ingenious little tendrils.




By then I was hanging out to do the waratah. There was a bit of too-ing and fro-ing to mark in the shape and create the petals before I got to add and stuff  the felt with fibrefill.

Seeing the waratah grow before my eyes as the bullion knots are stitched over the top of the stuffed felt gave me such pleasure. I couldn't stop smiling. I just love waratahs and it is a real joy to be able to create such a three dimensional image of one. I think in this design, it should be larger, even though it isn't in the foreground.

I was using a 20 cm hoop in my seat frame, which was beginning to squash some of the ghiordes knots, so I managed to really fix my 25cm hoop and transfer the work- making the last bits easier.


The last bits are the gum-nuts made by covering beads with thread, and two leaves stitched on stiffened gauze and attached via the main vein to give further dimension. I found these quite hard to cut out. Even with very sharp, small scissors it was really difficult to cut close enough to the stitching to remove all the gauze without also snipping a stitch.

I decided against adding the spider on a thread of web - I wanted the eye to follow the flowers rather than a spider.

Now I have to make up the bag. I think it will look good, but best of all I have learned some great techniques that I hope to use again for creating quite a range of Australian flowers.

I would certainly recommend Inspirations 73 for the range of Australian projects - great designs and great instructions.


I'm now trying to complete enough from my two Beating Around the Bush classes to report on them soon.