On An Evening in Roma

Last year after an exhaustive day touring the Vatican and all its textile treasures, we were invited to have dinner in our tour guide's home. Located right in downtown Rome, Simonetta's apartment had a beautiful terrazza where we ate the most delicious meal. We weren't there long before we started to notice the various embroidered household linens in use around the house. When asked about them, I expected Simonetta to say that she had done them herself but she said they were all done by her mother. I begged her to let me get a closer look and take some pictures.

All the linens were in use, so you will notice that some have stains because we did spill during dinner. Simonetta took it in stride telling us not to worry, she knew how to get out stains. It would be a pity to to put the linens away where no one ever saw her mother's beautiful work and she said that it felt a little like her mother was with her, to have her things all around.

This tablecloth has a design of applied Crochet chain lengths in different shades of Coral with Drawn Threadwork criss-crossing in sections around the edges...


This serving tray cloth is stitched in Punto Stuoia [Rush Stitch] which is similar to Roumanian Couching. It is an excellent stitch to use for filling areas as it is a self-couching stitch and gives great coverage without bulk as most of the thread lays on the front side of the work and only the tiny couching stitches show on the back (see the post on Bizantina Ars for an example of front and back):


This was my favourite and I took many pictures but this one shows a little of all the features. Padded Satin Stitched roses in an Art Nouveau (known in Italy as Liberty) design, Drawn Threadwork lines connecting motifs of Netting worked in the Linen Stitch (also known as the Cloth Stitch). It was exquisitely worked.


The wine stain was an excellent Chianti Riserva that we picked up at the Castello di Verrazzano on our way through Tuscany. They had the most interesting embroidered curtains... but we'll talk about that another time.

Our last evening together in Rome was spent in the very best way: among friends with great food and wine, admiring Italian needlework!

Italia Invita Forum - Part Three - 2007

My daughter and I headed off to Italy in April of 2007. Intended as a two-part vacation, the first part was all for her: she had never been to Italy so I got her to pick out places she wanted to go and things she wanted to see which we did first, then the last few days were to be for me at the Italia Invita Forum, this time to be held in Rimini, Italy.

We arrived in Rome and were picked up by Giovanna of Tuttoricamo and her son at the airport. I had never met Giovanna before but we had corresponded over the past two years and she generously offered to put us up for a few days when we arrived and again just before we left. I often wonder what she and her family thought of us on that first night... we arrived exhausted and in bad need of a shower. They had held dinner for us and we were very sorry to try to explain that they feed you every two hours on a long flight so we weren't the least bit hungry! We managed through dinner (everything was delicious even if I thought I'd never eat again, I was so full). Giovanna and her husband had found us a spare cell phone, got us bottled water for excursions, bought us transit passes and investigated everything we would need. We wandered out the next day into Rome (where I hadn't been for at least 15 years or more) and despite all efforts to prevent it, promptly got lost... and sunburnt.

We wandered into the museum at the Palazzo Venezia and enjoyed the air conditioning while going through the Applied Arts exhibition. I am mentioning this here instead of taking you on to Rimini right away, because it is worth mentioning that if you are in Rome, and some people do opt out of spending the day at the Vatican, there are other museums which have needlework. This is one of them. The collection covers the period around the turn of the 20th century, there are many things to look at, lots of military stuff (bring your husbands!) but there is also embroidery of various types.

Okay, fast forward. My daughter and I worked our way from Rome to Florence where we stayed in a convent. The nuns who worked the reception desk passed the time embroidering some designs from RAKAM, an Italian needlework magazine, and we had a great chat about the show I was headed for. They took us on a tour of the convent and showed us embroideries which were out of the view of the public. The stitching sisterhood is a great club to belong to! Off to Siena and Pisa and then we met up in Verona with Maria Rosaria of Tuttoricamo and her daughter and stayed with them for a few days in Mantua. I had never met Maria Rosaria before either but again, the passion for needlework brought us together. From there we went on to Ravenna and then to Rimini for the Forum.

The 2007 Italia Invita International Lace and Embroidery Forum was held at a bigger venue than the previous two editions in Bellaria, and this time it was in Rimini, Italy. Rimini is quite the place for conferences, exhibitions, shows and the like, busloads of people were arriving from other places when we arrived! I went straight to my first atelier class which was on Sicilian Drawn Thread work and toiled diligently for two hours before I could look at anything. This is what I made (well, almost - I had to complete it at home but we did get quite a lot done in class):


The space for the Forum was divided into sections, on one side were all the vendors and on the other side all the schools and associations had their booths with displays of their works and things for sale like books, kits, supplies.

The Laboratorio Tessile di Alice booth with a display of Trapunto:


The Palestrina Embroidery Booth:


This edition of the Forum's theme was Cushions and 70 schools and associations stitched a cushion cover in their specialty technique which were displayed together in one area;

This cushion was done in Palestrina Embroidery:


Orvieto Lace Cushion (picture taken from the Forum 2007 book):


...there was a competition open to all Italians to produce a 20cm square of embroidery or lace, traditional or freestyle and there were 160 entries displayed on the walls to marvel over:


There were displays of works from textile artists and a memorial display of the works of a beloved stitcher, recently passed on. A booth dedicated to early 20th century Italian needlework scholar Elisa Ricci and her work. I met Bianca Rosa Bellomo who is occupied with researching Elisa Ricci's life and got to see some of her own antique needlework book collection. The stories of her research are fascinating!

I left my daughter with Giovanna's son and Maria Rosaria's daughter at the Tuttoricamo booth which they kindly manned for their mothers while they took turns looking around the Forum. We used the booth as a depository for purchases and a place to go and sit down, compare purchases advise others of things of interest, eat lunch and visit. In the afternoon I attended a Bizantina Ars class and learned that the Punto Stuoia (Rush Stitch) was something that was going to take me more than two hours to learn!

I did eventually complete this piece though:


That night in our hotel after dinner we all met in the hotel's bar and questioned each other about the many things we'd seen during the day, this turned into a two-part tutorial on Puncetto needle lace and Sardinian Knotted Stitch... we fell exhausted into bed sometime after midnight to do it all again the next day. Three days of frenzied learning, buying, meeting people... I met the infamous Agnese who, without knowing it, had helped me so much in finding out things about Italia Invita with her column on SuperEva. I met so many people I got confused as to who was who... I lost my voice from talking so much, I literally wandered around the Forum with my mouth open. I took two other atelier classes, one on Aemilia Ars needle lace and one on Deruta Pulled Thread Embroidery. I can't show you pictures of my finished projects because they don't exist... my mind was so overloaded that unfortunately I retained nothing from these two classes. In the end I could no longer speak either language but spoke a kind of bad mix of the two and my daughter had to constantly remind me that she didn't speak Italian and couldn't understand a word I was saying.

Over the three days of the Forum, I tried to absorb as much as possible about where to find out things later, where to buy things later, who had a website, a book, kits... I bought so much stuff that I invaded my daughter's suitcase with my things and had to leave some clothes behind in my hotel room! It took me months to come down from this experience and I still have a sack of kits and materials in my room that I haven't sorted out yet.

The Forum was the biggest one yet, receiving more than 6,000 visitors. They produced another book (in Italian and English) called Merletti e Ricami Italiani Forum 2007 [Italian Laces and Embroideries] with pictures of all the cushions, stitch diagrams, a glossary of stitches and techniques and a couple of very interesting articles – especially the one on Elisa Ricci and her book collection. This book on the 2007 Forum is still available but I understand that it is nearly sold out at the publisher's. It is truly gorgeous and a fantastic resource for examples of many different Italian lace and embroidery techniques. I understand that Italian Needlecrafts has just received their supply.

Tuttoricamo has pictures of the 2007 Forum in the Italian pages of the website, click here to see some of the booths and click here to see some of the cushions.

Next time I'll tell you about the 2009 Forum which I also went to. I'm sure that I've forgotten to tell you a hundred things but I think you get an idea of how fantastic this Forum is.

Italia Invita - Part One - 2003

Italia Invita - Part Two - 2005

Italia Invita - Part Four - 2009

Italia Invita - Part Five - 2011

Thank you to Giovanna for some of the photos!

Monograms and ciphers

I'm a monogram junkie, I'll admit it. I love monograms, ciphers, crests, coats of arms that sort of thing. As I really like Whitework embroidery as well, I am continuously drawn to Monograms... I haven't stitched that many but I sure do enjoy looking at them. Even though there are quite a few books out there that are free, downloadable patterns... somehow I need to have the glossy paper, the heavy, hardcover book - it helps with the mood of far-away times.

I have a gorgeous book from Italy on embroidered ciphers, in fact its called: Il libro delle Cifre Ricamate [The Book of Embroidered Ciphers] by Liliana Babbi Cappelletti. This is a very special book. Hardcover, large format (9.75" wide x 12.25" high), printed on glossy paper, it was recently reprinted in a third edition in a small print run of only 1000 copies. Each copy is numbered and signed by the author. Though the text is in Italian, there are many, many lovely colour photos of incredible, gorgeous embroidery, some of it done by Lilli, some done by her students or women she knows, some are antique pieces from various private collections.

The photography is also beautiful. The pictures are full of antique needlework tools, flowers, ribbons, old pattern books, pottery... giving everything a romantic 19th century sort of feel.

There are designs throughout the historical chapter but also lots of pages that are solely dedicated to designs: combined letters...

I thought this was a single "M" but the text made me realize that it is in fact, two "A"s intertwined together:


...various alphabets of all styles - many with shading or drawn details which make you think of the perfect embroidery technique for them like Cutwork, Padded Satin Stitch, needle lace, etc....


...some very elaborate letters designed to stand alone or be the central focus of the embroidery, some names - this is fun as there are many strictly Italian names like Giovanna but there are lots of other names too like Hans, Marcelle, Clementine. There is a section of pattern designs for sayings: Amore, Buon Riposo...


...one for numbers, one for ornaments and embellishments, frames and ovals, love knots. Diagrams in the back illustrate various stitches like Padded Satin Stitch, Raised Padded Satin Stitch, Overcasting, Cutwork, Stem Stitch, Chain Stitch, Bullions and Rush Stitch which is similar to Roumanian Couching. There's more... how to set up your frame or hoop; how to take care of your linens... the bibliography is two columns of historical books on embroidery.

Can you see the little half moon in the centre of the crest? He has a face!


It's just a lovely book to sit in your lap with a cup of tea beside you and daydream the afternoon away thinking of forgotten eras where a woman's trousseaux was filled with these lovely items and better still, when one used these items on a regular basis. The perfect way to spend some time to yourself on Mother's Day!

Il libro delle Cifre Ricamate is available from Tombolo Disegni (send an email request to order).
Or email Elena at Italian Needlecrafts and see if she can get it.

Looking for things to read to keep that 19th century feeling? Check out Tuttoricamo - under the 'History' heading there are articles on trousseaux, the handkerchief, the laundry, the tea towel, and others to help you keep the mood.

Italia Invita - Part Two - 2005

As Italia Invita has now announced their plans for the 2011 Forum in Parma, Italy, I've started a series of posts to tell you about this amazing bi-annual event. I started with the first Forum in Bellaria in 2003 here.

For me, the build up to the 2005 Forum was even greater than for 2003. By then I'd joined an Italian embroidery message board frequented by Italian women who were searching for the same information about Italian embroidery and lace techniques that I was! I learned that there wasn't a lot of information about Italian needlework, not even in Italy! Imagine my surprise. It seems that technical instructions were for the most part passed on verbally and that unless you frequented an embroidery school there wasn't any easy way to learn them. Books on technique were scarce. Imagine my surprise too when I discovered that these women who were searching for information were all young. Modern living in Italy, as in most other countries, meant less leisure time for women who were working and so techniques were in danger of being lost as the women of previous generations were literally taking their needlework secrets to the grave.

I joined an embroidery message board but didn't post - yes, I lurked for a whole year! I absorbed everything they learned about the next Forum which was to be held again in Bellaria on May 13th to 15th, 2005. Everyone was very excited about it and there were lots of messages. I also discovered the girl Agnese from SuperEva (see previous post) was now involved in the running of the Forum and she was a member of the message board, so there was lots of reliable information from her. My Italian needlework vocabulary grew as did my desire to go back to Italy. Again, I wanted to go so badly but just couldn't afford it.

For the 2005 edition of the Italia Invita International Forum of Lace and Embroidery the theme was Origins and this peaked my curiosity so much. There was to be historical data about Italian needlework – exactly the stuff I was searching for. All schools and associations exhibiting at the Forum were asked to produce a sample of a Border in the technique of their specialty. There was a competition open to everyone to produce a shoulder bag with the "Original Stitch - Basting" on it. There were special exhibits amongst which were: Byssus, a thread obtained from a Mediterranean sea mollusk; Hemp weaving and a stand dedicated to Elisa Ricci, an Italian needlework scholar from the early 20th century and her publications. There were lectures on the methods of transferring patterns, Elisa Ricci and her work, embroideries and laces from the 16th and today. There were workshops and mini-workshops called ateliers for learning techniques. The Forum had 3500 visitors - a good 2000 more than the 1st edition. It all sounded like a dream come true. I resolved that for the next one, I was going no matter what.

On the message board after the Forum I read about how everyone got to finally meet each other, having previously only known each other through email, how they were all overwhelmed with elation about all they had seen and learned. There had never been so many different Italian needlework techniques, masters, schools and associations together at the same event before. The newly born website Tuttoricamo now had a wealth of information to draw on having made so many contacts at the Forum. ** Update: Tuttoricamo has now changed to blog format, the link has been updated from my original post.

And it got even better... there was a book! ...and it was in Italian AND English! Of course I sent off a money order for it right away. It was a beautiful thing. Merletti e Ricami Italiani Forum 2005 [Italian Laces and Embroideries]. It was full of historical articles, colour photos, a regional breakdown of the techniques exhibited at the Forum with photos of all the Border samples the exhibitors had stitched, stitch diagrams, bibliographies... I had to go to the next one.

I told my daughter that I was going. Period. I told her she was welcome to come and that I'd love to show her some of Italy but I was going in May of 2007 and she had better get used to the idea - we'd work out how to make up the school she'd miss somehow... nothing was going to stop me. I started saving every spare penny.

Here are some sample pages of the book:


Next we'll talk about the Italia Invita Forum 2007 which I actually got to attend and where I lost my mind...

You can learn more about Byssus at Tuttoricamo, look under the 'Materials' heading for the article entitled: Sea Silk. Information on Elisa Ricci can be found under 'Prominent Characters'.

You can still get the book Merletti e Ricami Italiani Forum 2005. Send an email request to Italian Needlecrafts and ask Elena to get it for you.

Italia Invita - Part One - 2003

Italia Invita - Part Three - 2007

Italia Invita - Part Four - 2009

Italia Invita - Part Five - 2011

Puncetto books

After getting lost in the mail, returned to sender and resent out, four books on Puncetto have finally arrived at Italian Needlecrafts.

Since these books are very hard to find and to purchase for those of us outside of Italy, I wanted to wait until they were available from a reliable website with PayPal options for payment before telling you about them. Many of you have asked for more about Puncetto needle lace and finally I can tell you something.

If you're wondering which one to start with, it should be this one, Puncetto Valsesiano, Manuale di Base by Anna Axerio:


It has the basics. While the text is in Italian, there are lots of step-by-step photos. I think the hardest part about making Puncetto needle lace is tension and keeping track of where you are.

I know I get lost in the counting all the time so my samples are definitely not worth showing you! I have watched my Mom knit and to avoid getting lost, she keeps a pad of paper and pencil beside her. She draws lines and other symbols to represent the number of stitches and which individual types of stitches she does per row when she's doing something particularly complicated. I am thinking that I might adopt this method at least until I get the hang of Puncetto.

The book has images of the symbols used in patterns, the different parts of the design, the basic stitches, how to add a new thread when you run out, how to start on the edge of fabric, how to start freestyle (like in the video here), then many patterns of varying difficulty and pictures of finished pieces, how to do arcs with picots similar to these that I showed you before:

... and finally how to insert Puncetto pieces into fabric.

At present, as far as I know there is no specific book in English on Puncetto needle lace. As mentioned in a previous post there are some pages in old needlework manuals (in English) which will help you out with the basics of the actual stitch but they don't have patterns or explain in detail how to build a design.

This book has everything you would need to make yourself many, many pieces of this beautiful needle lace. The other books listed at Italian Needlecrafts are specific to their subjects and explain with lots of diagrams and pictures how to execute more complicated (and delightful!) patterns. They do not however, have any instructions on the basics.

Italia Invita Forum - Part One - 2003

I have been putting off telling you about the Italia Invita Forum because I was waiting for them to release information about the next event. Now that they have, I can tell you about this amazing bi-annual event now held in Parma, Italy and a bit of it's history.

Italia Invita, which means Italy Invites, was started by five Italian women in October of 2001 with the aim of "promoting contact and rapport between the Italian lace and embroidery entities, inheritors of the tradition, and analogous entities abroad". Italy has a long history with embroidery and lace. The idea of Italia Invita was to take from the past and carry into the future the priceless patrimony of Italian needlework; possibly rediscovering techniques which had fallen by the wayside, bringing to light for the world the treasures of Italian textile arts.

These women (Antonia Busi, Fiorella Gaggi, Cristina Notore, Rosalba Pepi and Thessy Schoenholzer Nichols) proposed the ambitious idea of holding a bi-annual event and inviting the world to Italy. The first Forum was to be held May 9th to 11th, 2003 in the town of Bellaria Igea Marina in the north-eastern part of Italy, near Rimini.

When I discovered this, I nearly lost my mind. I had been struggling to find any scrap of information about Italian needlework until then with almost no results. I wanted to drop everything and leave for Italy. I had been at a new job only a few months and had no savings to speak of, certainly nothing that would permit me to risk losing my job or to buy plane tickets. My daughter was 12 and refused to even think of travel... and so I became a voyeur. The internet was all I had and it was still relatively poor in information. I had my subscription to RAKAM, an Italian needlework magazine and I searched for articles about the Forum everywhere, even going to my local library and sitting in the reading lounge pouring over Italian newspapers. I belonged to an Italian cross-stitch message board and read with envy the plans the Italian girls were making to go to the Forum. I begged them all to tell me everything without leaving any small detail out.

The 1st edition of the Italia Invita International Forum of Lace and Embroidery was host to 19 countries, exhibited over 50 needleart techniques and had more than 1500 visitors. It was attended by embroidery and lace schools and associations; there were private collections and over 20 merchant booths selling supplies. The girls of my message board came back with fabulous tales of beautiful techniques, how much they bought, things they'd seen that until then, they had only heard of and they had been able to take workshops on embroidery and lace techniques!

It was at this point in time that I discovered a girl named Agnese who wrote a column for the guide website SuperEva called "Not only cross stitch" (SuperEva is similar to About.com). Agnese listed all the techniques that had been on display at the Forum which I diligently copied down. This gave me a real starting point to target my random searches for information and add to the lists that I had been making from the pages of RAKAM.

It was also from Agnese's column that I learned about the CD-ROM that Italia Invita had made about the Forum. I wrote a letter to them in what I'm sure was terrible Italian asking how I could purchase the CD-ROM.

Here is a scan of the cover art for the CD-ROM:


Eventually I sent a money order and the CD-ROM finally arrived after months of waiting, worrying and anticipation... but it was formatted for the PC – I have always had Macintosh computers. When I successfully got my mother to leave her PC I sat down expecting the whole CD to be in Italian but was elated to discover that it was in Italian and English! What a bonus! Not only could I read and understand completely (the CD-ROM was very well translated by Vima deMarchi Micheli, Patricia Girolami and Marina Martin) but now I knew the English words for the Italian techniques, stitches, materials, tools... I now had the names of teachers, schools, associations that I could investigate. Some of the techniques exhibited had a photo, some historical and technical information, not all the works were shown and I found out later that this was because the CD-ROM was produced before the Forum in order to be given out at the event and so the embroideries and laces that were actually exhibited could not be photographed beforehand. Still, this was the mother lode of all finds for me and kept me fascinated for many, many hours. I hung out at my Mom's house quite a lot in those days, stealing every minute that she wasn't at her computer.

There is a French website about lace that made five pages of pictures and reports about the 2003 Forum. You can still see them today. Click on anything in blue with an underline to see other pictures, at the bottom right-hand corner of each page click on "suite" to go to the next page.

Tomorrow we'll talk about the 2005 edition of the Forum...

Italia Invita - Part Two - 2005

Italia Invita - Part Three - 2007

Italia Invita - Part Four - 2009

Italia Invita - Part Five - 2011

Things we would never dream of doing today...

The following two pieces are samples of borders that one could buy by the metre in Bologna, Italy around the middle of the twentieth century. I'm guessing that one picked out one's preferred motifs when commissioning a tablecloth or other stitched item. If anyone can offer other information, please – please leave a comment below!

After the end of the Aemilia Ars Society in the late 1930s and the bombing of their shop during the Second World War, a woman by the name of Maria Garagnani (1904–1989) purchased the store and had it restored. By employing former teachers and students of the defunct Society, the store produced and sold many different kinds of needlework. The store logo is stamped on the labels.

The label here says that this border cost 18 Lire per metre.


And this border cost 10 Lire per metre.


In 1950 there were 625 Lire to one US dollar.

By today's terminology these are samples of Punto Antico Embroidery and Reticello needle lace. A row of Four-Sided Stitch is used to separate the rows of Punto Antico motifs stitched in Curl Stitch, Buttonhole Stitch, Eyelets, Satin Stitch and Bullion Knots. The Reticello needle lace area is bordered with Overcast Stitch, the needle lace motifs are done in Detached Buttonhole Stitch, Needleweaving, Buttonhole Stitch, Overcast bars and Picots.

Could you ever contemplate stitching metres and metres of this?!

These two pieces and a few other samples are among the collection of needlework at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan, Italy.

You can learn more about Maria Garagnani at Tuttoricamo. Look under the "Prominent Characters" heading, then under the column heading "...yesterday".

There is an article about the history of the Aemilia Ars Society in the May/June 2009 issue of Piecework magazine.

Thanks to Stefania for the photos!