Clean Edges on Drawn-Thread Work

Just a quick note to say that if you've ever wondered how Italian Drawn-Thread Work has such nice clean edges in their cutwork areas, get on over to Silvana Fontanelli's blog for an excellent tutorial with great step-by-step photos.

This type of turned-over instead of cut edge treatment is fundamental to techniques like Punto Antico, Reticello and other Italian Drawn-Thread Work techniques!

Experiments on Buratto

A friend from Florence sent me a small piece of cotton Buratto woven by the Fondazione Lisio to test out.

This is not the modern version of Buratto that looks somewhat like burlap, this is recently hand woven fabric made in the ancient technique and on an ancient hand loom in an effort to produce a reproduction of the ancient Buratto, historically used in Italy. I told you a little about it previously in this post.

This is what the weave looks like on the Buratto from the Fondazione Lisio:

I mounted it on my slate frame which, happily was the perfect size, this piece of Buratto was 23 cm wide:

I think I may have mounted it incorrectly but it was good and taut and that's all I cared about. Then I went about experimenting.

The first motif I chose from Alessandro Paganino's 16th century pattern book called: Il Burato. I did it in a horizontal darning stitch with Coton a Broder no. 12 Ecru. Too bad I have since discovered that the no. 12 Coton a Broder in my stash is no longer available to purchase. I liked the coverage I got with the thread used.

After that I thought about Catherine de'Medici Embroidery and so I got out some Cotone Povero yarn and did a little dividing line under the Paganino motif.

Then I thought about other kinds of embroideries that were traditionally done on Buratto. Both Sicilian and Sardinian netted work came to mind so I decided to do a motif in the Linen Stitch using some Sardinian linen thread that a friend had given me. I chose a motif from GiovanAndrea Vavassore's 16th century pattern book called: Opera Nuova Universale intitolata Corona di Ricami.

Oh how I struggled with the linen thread but I think I would have even if the Buratto had been made of silk. And speaking of silk, I wanted to do my last motif in silk yarn that I have which is similar in thickness to the Cotone Povero but made of silk and viscose of Bamboo. I tried several motifs but was unhappy with the results, the silk yarn was too thick for more than one pass in Darning Stitch and looked strange for parts of the motifs where there was only one square of design.

I thought about it for a dangerously long time until it was in danger of become a UFO (unfinished object). I really wanted to use the silk/bamboo thread.

Well, I told myself, just do something in Catherine de'Medici stitch and be done! I hunted around in the Punto Madama Caterina book of patterns from the Accademia Punto Assisi and found a small motif.

The silk/bamboo thread was a dream after the linen thread but untwisted quickly and left a lot of fluff everywhere. I love the twisted-rope effect of the Catherine de'Medici stitch!

All in all, I would say that this ancient-style Buratto by the Fondazione Lisio has been given a fair test by me. It held up well to the many times I ripped out threads of all types. Now to unmount it and see what happens when I wash it!

I put my Buratto with some towels on the hand-wash cycle in the washing machine, then blocked it on a big fluffy towel face-down and ironed it dry. My blocking could have been better but here it is:

The cotton woven threads of the Buratto plumped up and so, of course, the holes got smaller. It shrunk about 2 cm from selvedge to selvedge (left and right sides in the photo) and I washed it in cold water. The Buratto is really soft after washing! My darning-stitched motif at the top is more filled-in, the silk/bamboo lost a lot of it's definition and thus I think I prefer the unwashed silk/bamboo thread better as you can see the effect of the Catherine de'Medici stitch.

I'm really impressed with the linen stitch! For all the zillions of times I ripped out and started over, the unwashed motif was uneven and you could really see the uneven thickness of the linen thread. After washing though, it looks good!

Unwashed

Washed

Traditional applications were things like flounces for curtains, pillows, tablecloths, inserts, ecc. I think you could also use it on clothing as it is so soft after washing. This should interest the folks who do period re-enactments.

The Fondazione Lisio has plans to try other materials like silk in future Buratto experiments. I am very glad that they have succeeded in helping to continue the ancient tradition of Buratto hand woven fabric. Watch their website for more news.

This was lots of fun! A few embroiderers were asked to participate in these experiments so I'm very interested to see everyone's results! There should be some posted soon on the TuttoRicamo blog.

A heartfelt thank you to the Fondazione Lisio for allowing me this opportunity and to my Florentine friend for thinking of me when searching out people to experiment on Buratto!

Liebster Blog Award

 
Katherine over at Regaling From Windy Ridge has nominated me for a Leibster Blog Award! Thank you very much Katherine! I hope I'm doing this right:

Liebster is a German word meaning favorite, dearest, or beloved and the Liebster is awarded to new bloggers with less than 200 followers.

So I must now:
1. Thank my friend and link back to her
2. Post the award on my blog
3. List the bloggers that I pass the Liebster Award on to with their links
3. Let them know by commenting
4. Share five random facts about myself that people do not know about me

Katherine wrote on her blog after receiving her award:

I feel when you make note of someone you can really give them a lift to their step.

I completely agree! Funny how you take stock at certain points in time, I was just thinking that I've been blogging for two years now, the anniversary date was just a couple of weeks ago. I haven't scratched the surface of what I wanted to tell you all and I seem to have less and less time to dedicate to writing. Thank you all for hanging in and checking back on me every once in awhile!

Here are my five blogs that fall under the rules of this award which I check everyday and look forward to seeing what they've done:

Elisabetta - Ricami a Mano - a young mother who stitches beautifully! I find her projects so delightful and I love looking back every once in a while to admire all the lovely things she's shown us. How she manages to stitch with a new baby, I'll never know!

Silvana - Il Piacere del ricamo - a new author with wonderful projects and tutorials, she is always ready to answer questions and each project is better than the last!

Silvia - Dentelles d'abord - a talented embroiderer with a passion for needlelace. I especially like the way she works in historical information about the various techniques she writes about.

Blandina - La Griccia - there are so many things I enjoy about this blog: experiments in textile dyeing, stitching, weaving, recipes and her photos of her walks around Florence where she lives!

Elisabetta - Elisaricamo - this is a group of Sardinian stitchers who stitch on commission for weddings, communions and other celebrations with the proceeds from these and other work they sell once a year at a fair going to the Camp Garba Mission in Kenya. These ladies really do a wide variety of stitching and it is always interesting to see what they are making.

Whew! That was tough! Some of the little blogs I follow, I was surprized to see that they now have more than 200 members! Still, it was a tough choice to narrow down only five!

I will have to dash off a note to my nominees to spread the Leibster-love, but first five things you most likely don't know about me:

1. I love designs of honey bees and fleur-des-lys - I have strange collections of designs I've come across tucked away all over the house, though none of my decorating reflects these passions!

2. I love calligraphy but my own handwriting is terribly illegible!

3. My favourite flowers are gerbera daisies which I frequently buy from the plant store and inevitably kill very quickly.

4. I love being outside and especially on the beach during wild windstorms, in fact the nastier the weather the more I like being at the seaside.

5. Besides well-stocked needlework stores, I absolutely love stationery stores and can get lost in there for almost as many hours as needlework stores!

New page added about buying supplies

As a permanent page like the one about my personal library, I have made a page about online needlework suppliers and ordering from Italy. I seem to be getting a lot of requests for shopping so I hope this new page will help you out!

La Prilletta in Bologna

Some weeks ago, I received an email from Anna Rondelli of the Embroidery Association La Prilletta in Bologna.

She asked me to take a look at her website and her work.

You should too! There are photos of exquisitely delicate traditional embroidery techniques done with the utmost care and finesse. Traditional embroidery stitches like raised and padded satin stitch, shadow work, Broderie Anglais, needlepainting, cut work and drawn thread work are just some of the techniques used on fabrics like silk, organdy and fine Italian linens.

The aim of the Association La Prilletta is to rediscover and make known classic embroidery executed using a hoop which enjoyed its heyday in Bologna between the end of the 1800s and the early part of the 1900s. Anna has some of her grandmother's and great-grandmothers patterns and embroideries which she uses for inspiration along with some published designs from the period.

Taking their inspiration from pieces found in family trousseaux, the Association La Prilletta works to make this embroidery technique relevant to our modern times while being faithful to its past. They practise it so it will not be lost over time and in the hopes of enriching all those who encounter it with the beauty of this embroidery.

Anna herself spent 10 years learning from Vilma, a Bolognese embroidery master who attended the famous embroidery school headquartered at the Sacro Cuore Sanctuary in Bologna. This famous workshop was also renowned for the pieces of exqusite Aemilia Ars needlelace that it produced in the early 20th century.

The Association La Prilletta is currently working towards their first exhibition which will fall in September of 2012 in Bologna, watch their website for more details.

They offer classes in these beautiful embroidery techniques and a few didactic booklets, go to their website for more info.

Lidia Morelli

I received a lovely little book called Mani Álacri as a gift and I was curious about it's author Lidia Morelli. I did a little a research, and as it usually does, one thing leads to another and another and pretty soon what I thought would be a nice subject for a quick post turns into something you could write a good long article on.

First things first, the book. Mani Álacri is small little hardcover book with a cloth cover like they used to do, the dedication page is dated December 1933. Mani Álacri translates literally to "lively hands", the subtitle Libro di Lavori Femminili is the "book of feminine works". There were several different cover designs for this volume, here are a couple of other ones:

In the introduction, the author states that before writing this manual, she took a close look at the others which had come before and found that while there were lots of magazines and pattern books, there wasn't much in the way of a real and proper manual which offered technical instructions. She does quite well in just under 500 pages to provide just that. She also stresses that it is very important to teach children these techniques and that the young mind is more capable than people give it credit for. There are mostly black and white photos but there are the occasional colour plates as was normal for books of the period.

In her illustrations I like that she shows how to hold the needle:

There are photos in this volume of Italian embroideries as well as traditional embroideries which are well-known to other countries but especially for the Italian works, the photos are of pieces I haven't seen in other books.

As always I am fascinated by the women behind these things.

Lidia Morelli was born in Turin on the 10th of June, 1871 to Efisio Morelli and Vittoria Ceresole Morelli and died February 7, 1946. As far as I can tell she had two brothers, Ennio and Dario and three sisters, Ifigenia, Alda and Dora. Her brother Ennio became quite a well-known artist. She graduated at 18 as a teacher and pursued Linguistics and Literature going on to become a writer and a journalist. In 1895 she won a teaching competition. Her earlier books were written under the pen name of Donna Clara. I don't have a complete list of all her writing, but here are some of the items that we found:

Dalla Cucina al Salotto. New Edition, 1925.

• Dalla Cucina al Salotto. Enciclopedia della vita domestica. Turin, 1905.
• Far molto con poco. L'arte di creare buoni piatti con residui di cucina. 1909.
• La cuoca medichessa. Un regime in cucina per ogni malattia. With Dott. Nazione. Turin, 1913.
• Nel paese della trina. Milan, 1914.
• Lavori nuovi. 1914?
• Gioielli antichi. Milan, 1914.
• Vincoli d’arte. Milan, 1915.
• Lavori per i nostri soldati. Turin, 1918.
• Cocci. Milan, 1920.
• Storie d’inverno e di estate. Rome, 1922.
• Come devo comportarmi? Libro per tutti. With Anna Vertua Gentile, Milan, 1929.
• Massaia 900 : la cucina moderna interpretata da il capo cuoco del re. Turin, 193?

La Casa che vorrei avere. 1931.

• La casa che vorrei avere: come ideare, disporre, arredare, abbellire, rimodernare la mia casa. Milan, 1931.
• Come sistemare e governare la mia casa. Hoepli, Milan, 1932. ** With illustrations by Ennio Morelli. (Ennio was Lidia's brother.)
• Mani Álacri. Libro di lavori femminili. Turin, 1933.
• Le vie del buon gusto. Milan, 1935.
• Massaie di domani: conversazioni di economia domestica : per le scuole secondarie di avviamento professionale a tipo industriale femminile. Turin, 1935.
• Nuovo ricettario domestico: enciclopedia moderna per la casa. Milan, 1935.

L'Arte più difficile. 1936.

• L’arte più difficile; saper vivere con il prossimo. Milan, 1936.
• Le massaie contro le sanzioni. Turin, 1936.
• Le massaie e l'autarchia. Turin, 1937.
• Nuovi orrizonti per la vostra mensa. Preface only, 1937.
• Il lavoro della giovinetta italiana: nelle scuole secondarie di avviamento professionale a tipo industriale femminile. With Irene Faccio, Turin, 1938.
• Per voi massaie d'Italia. Turin, 1938.
• Per lui che viene. With Nello Palmieri & Maria Meschini Tursini, Rome, 1940.
• La vita sobria. Rome, 1941.
• Pentola magica P.A. brevettata. Turin, 1941.
• Casa nostra: trattato di economia domestica. With Erminia Macerati, Milan, 1942.
• Cirio per la casa 1942. Milan, 1942.
• Puericultura. Aggiunta al Volume: Per voi, massaie d'Italia. Turin, 1942.
• Vita di casa: economia domestica. Cappelli, Bologna, 1942. 
• Casa e bambini: Conversazioni di economia domestica per le alunne della terza classe della scuola media. With Giovanni Battista Allaria, Turin, 1943. **With artwork by Enrico Montalto di Fragnito (Enrico was Lidia's nephew by her sister Dora).

They are books about cooking, cooking with leftovers, cooking for illness; needlework, housekeeping, house management, childcare, etiquette, lace, jewelry, art; stories, occupations for soldiers.

Lidia Morelli wrote articles for the Italian newspaper La Stampa. Her books were updated and reprinted many times over her long and active publishing career. She wrote for the architectural magazine La Casa Bella (which became Casabella) on Parma Embroidery and Petit Point among other topics.

La Casa Bella no. 42, June 1931.

Together with Elisa Ricci, Lidia Morelli wrote the section on Embroidery for the Italian Enciclopedia Treccani.

No evidence yet of a husband or children but the dedication page in my copy of Mani Álacri is a sad note to a dear "Cecilia" who seems to have died as a child. It seems to indicate that Cecilia was a niece who enjoyed needlework.

On the Italian Giornalism and History website there is a small paragraph about her:

"A little closed, a little reserved, a highly educated and sincerely modest woman, the soul of an artist and essentially feminine, a ready intellect to critique and tempered by an infinite goodness" (F. Sacchetti Parvis, 1929). Ms. Morelli made the first steps in the field of publishing for women in 1905 with the volume Dalla cucina al salotto [From the kitchen to the livingroom]. In the thirties she was at the centre of an unquestionable success that even included the radio (G. Isola, Abbassa la tua radio, per favor [Please turn down your radio]. Florence, 1990, pg. 112).

It looks like Lidia Morelli did more than one radio show or segment. I looked up the above-quoted text on GoogleBooks but I can only see a snippet which mentions Radio Torino, a radio station in Turin, and Radiocorriere, a weekly program publication for the RAI broadcasting company.

There is so much more research to do and I'll update when we find out more.

A tremendous thankyou to Bianca Rosa who did lots of research for me during the snowstorms in Bologna this past winter!!!

Venetian Needle Lace

Appunti di Merletto ad Ago - Burano e Venezia.

There are not a lot of books out there on the actual execution of Venetian needle lace, I mean the actual technical part, not just what the stitches look like. The booklet above is just that. The author, Ombretta Panese Brettagna made notes while participating in a course and her friends encouraged her to publish them as a bit of assistance for those who already have dabbled a bit on their own or who have taken a class here or there but are having trouble remembering little, but important, details. The text is in Italian and there are 30 pages.

I asked Ombretta if I could post about her little book and she gave me permission and then told me she has her own blog. It is definitely something to check out if you are a fan of needle lace from Burano or Venice.

After having completed two courses each consisting of 300 hours offered by the Region of Venice at the Professional School of the Province of Venice, Ombretta was awarded a certificate certifying her as a Needle Lace Expert.

Together with some of her classmates she started a group called The Cultural Association of Venetian Lace [Associazione Culturale il Merletto Veneziano] to merge into one association, the specialties of the Venetian Lagoon: the Needle Lace of Burano and Venice and the Bobbin Lace of Pellestrina. At the bottom of this post, there is a link to a great video on YouTube about the lace of Pellestrina.

You can purchase this little book at Tombolo Disegni.