Hemstitching - New Book!

Anna Castagnetti of Ricami a Fili Tesi has been busy! Her latest book is on Hemstitching and is a gold mine of different stitches and edge treatments.

Over 60 pages of closeup step-by-step photos and diagrams make this volume easy to follow even if you don't read Italian.

Edge treatments include:

• mitred corners (two ways to do it)
• folded hem (including corner treatment)
• rolled hem (including corner treatment)
• buttonholed hem (including corner treatment)
• buttonholed hem with picots made of bullion knots
• long and short blanket stitch hem (including corner treatment and a couple of ways to dress up this type of hem)
• cat's tooth hem (it's like nun's stitch - including corner treatment)
• looped fringes like those used in Assisi Embroidery
• folded fringe hem with one variation and including a tasseled corner
• looped and knotted hemstitch (including corner treatment)
• flystitch hemstitch
• round hem with needle lace triangles
• triple buttonhole arcs with picots
• embellished fringed hem (including corner treatment)
• overlapping buttonhole arcs (including corner treatment)
• bull's head stitch
• fringe with embellished four-sided stitch
• joining two pieces of hemmed fabric together with simple hemstitch (including corner treatment)
• two methods for appliqué borders (including corner treatment and embellishment stitching)
• method for making your own bias tape and applying it to a hem (including corner treatment)

Anna's good taste and expertise shine though in this volume which, as you can see from the content list above, is very thorough.

You also can see more of Anna's beautiful hemstitching in Mani di Fata's latest hemstitching issue: Punti a Giorno 7.

In Europe Anna's latest book is available directly from the publisher NuovaS1 via money transfer. Overseas, contact Anna (she speaks English) and she'll let you know how to get it.

Ars Aesis and Buratto Sfilato - New Book!

Giuseppa Federici's latest book is out and this time she's got a variety of things to show us! She has created some beautiful embroidery designs using a variety of stitches, some specifically from other Italian needlework techniques and others form traditional embroidery including some fascinating research which has lead her to the embroideries of Portugal.

Ars Aesis embroidery takes the Latin name for Jesi which is the town where Giuseppa Federici calls home in the Marche region of Italy. She wanted to dedicate an embroidery style to her local area and Ars Aesis features motifs of local flowers, crops and trees. Inspiration also comes from the beautiful frescos and interior decorations of the local early 19th century Villa Salvati.

Ideal fabric is listed as homespun, but if you don't have any of that handy, compact linens will work just fine. Threads used for Ars Aesis are crochet threads like DMC Babylo or Anchor Freccia. Using these threads results in lovely textured work.

Step-by-step colour photo sequences show the execution of both the embroidery stitches used and the insertion stitches used to join pieces of fabric together. There are also needle lace stitches for open areas and withdrawn thread stitches for borders, hems and framing. The how-to section is quite extensive and is an impressive 23 pages long including a section on tassels. There are over 30 motif designs.

There is a short section of the book dedicated to Buratto Sfilato (Drawn Thread Work done on contemporary Buratto fabric). A lovely Caterina de' Medici border motif is stitched around an area that is withdrawn with a pattern of a rose executed in linen stitch. While neither the Catherine de'Medici embroidery nor the linen stitch is explained, this is still a very important section. The entire withdrawn area is explained in step-by-step detailed photos showing closeups of both the back and the front of the work. There is also an edge treatment explained and if you want to learn more about Catherine de'Medici embroidery, Giuseppa Federici has written three books on it.

This book ends with a photo gallery of embroideries and a valuable bibliography to help you in further study. It is 80 pages long and the text is in Italian.

In Europe you can purchase by bank transfer directly from the author herself. Right now I'm sure she is madly getting ready for the Italia Invita Forum in Parma, so give her a few days to answer you. If you're overseas, Tombolo Disegni will be carrying it. She too is getting ready to go to the show in Parma so you may not get a reply to your email right away.

Aemilia Ars Rose Needle Lace Insert in Piecework

As I hinted a few posts ago, there is an Aemilia Ars needle lace insert in the May/June 2013 issue of Piecework magazine by the Associazione "I Merletti di Antonilla Cantelli".

The project includes step by step photos which had to be rather small in the magazine due to space constrictions but if you have a magnifying glass handy, they are valuable source of reference when executing the lace.

I had a reader write to ask me if the lace was indeed stitched to the size of the pattern in the magazine and the answer is yes! It is an exquisitely delicate little piece:

I had another reader write to ask me for more details on how to execute the "gruppetti" picots which are placed at the intersection of two overcast bars. As I am only a beginner when it comes to executing this lace, I can't pretend that my "gruppetti" are anything to show off but the ladies of the Associazione "I Merletti di Antonilla Cantelli" assure me that practise, much practise improves them. I know that's not a magic answer but it's all I have for you. These ladies have been doing this lace for many, many years to achieve the high level of expertise in their lace, don't be too hard on yourself if yours doesn't look the same, but don't give up either!

If you're fortunate enough to be going to the Italia Invita Forum in Parma in May this year, stop by and see the ladies at their booth, you can catch their latest book or better yet, take their mini-courses!

I hope you enjoy the article in Piecework, somehow the photos never do justice to what is the most amazing piece of needle lace I've ever been close to. 

Pizzo Margarete - Margaretenspitze

For those of you who were intrigued by the Pizzo Margarete or Margaretenspitze knotted lace that I told you about in this post here, Lotte Heinemann has reprinted her book and has some essential parts translated into English (the book text is in German) which are available in an insert along with some graph paper for you to chart your own creations.

As this technique is originally a German one, I thought that maybe those of you who may want to delve further into it would like to know of this book's reprinting. The book is 147 pages and coil bound which is nice for referencing while you are working. The English insert is 7 pages long and highlights the essential information you will need for working the lace.

There are clear, close-up photographs and hand-drawn illustrations:

If you have some experience with Macramé, this will be a valuable volume to add to your collection. For those of you who speak German, I would say this is the bible on this technique.

You can order it from this website, clicking on some of the links produces the option for English text, the book is pictured on the link Literatur und Links. You must request the English insert as it is not automatically included.

Lotte Heinemann tells me she and a friend are working on a beginner's book for this technique to be published in English and German. She will keep me posted and I will pass on any information that I receive.

Old Needlework Encyclopedia - Volume II

Thanks to a very generous and kind friend in Italy, I have, at last, the second volume of this old needlework encyclopedia: Il Nuovo Libro dei Lavori Femminili, Volume Secondo [The New Book of Woman's Works, Second Volume] by Amelia Brizzi Ramazzotti, Sonzogno, Milan. I believe that it was printed in 1914 though I can't find a date in the book.

I told you about the first volume in this post here. The second volume is full of references to Italian needlework as well as traditional widely known techniques. It has 10 sections: Embroidery on Tulle, Filet Lace, Knitting, Crochet with a subsection on Hairpin Crochet, Macramé, Tatting, Bobbin Lace, Renaissance Lace with subsections on Brussels Lace and Cluny Lace, Tenerife Lace, Needle Lace with subsections on Reticello, geometric Aemilia Ars Lace and Venetian Point Lace including Gros Point.

The last page is an ad for Cartier-Bresson thread which lists the appropriate threads to use for the various techniques and how they are (were!) available, eg. in skeins, balls or spools.

I wanted to show you this idea for Filet Lace using the tape used in Renaissance Lace:

It says that the design must be laid out on paper or fabric and attached to a support for execution much like that of Embroidery on Tulle. First you attach the tape and then go about filling in the leaves and medallions making sure to catch the filet netting below. This is definitely a different approach to Filet Lace!

This is a wonderful knotted fringe from the Macramé section:

Here is the knot in case you feel like figuring it out:

A lovely little volume to study and be inspired by. Text in Italian. There is also a listing at the end of other publications and I spy one on monograms in satin stitch that I'll be searching for...

Nordic Needle and Punto Antico

I used to write the newsletter for my local embroidery group and so I subscribed to many needlework newsletters and messageboards as sources for the latest news and products to report to the membership. Years have past and I no longer write the newsletter but I'm still subscribed to the various needlework newsletters.

Imagine my surprise to open the April 8th Nordic Needle Newsletter and see that the feature article was on Punto Antico and cited my blog and article for Piecework!

It is rather startling to open an email and view your own photo staring back at you.

I'm very glad to see that people are interested in Punto Antico here on this side of the Atlantic, Nordic Needle is a needlework store in the state of North Dakota in the US. In the newsletter they provide links to a designer called Gingerbread Girl who has designed some contemporary patterns for using Punto Antico stitches (follow the links in the newsletter to see them). I couldn't find out anything about Gingerbread Girl so unfortunately I can't tell you about her or her kits.

There is only one thing I wanted to add to what Debi says in the newsletter. While it is true that Punto Antico has become most commonly practised as a counted thread technique, it is also still done as a freestyle technique in Italy.

There is a delightful book called Punto Antico disegnato by Giuseppa Federici which describes how this technique is executed as a freestyle embroidery. The text is only in Italian but the step-by-step colour photos are easy to follow and there are over 50 patterns, motifs and designs - some of which use Cutwork and Reticello designs to compliment the Punto Antico stitches.

You can order this book from Tombolo Disegni, send an email request to order.

If anyone knows anything about Gingerbread Girl designs, will you leave a comment below?

Rosita Levi Pisetzky

It's funny how the mind works. For months I've been searching for biographical information on Rosita Levi Pisetzky always turning up empty. I finally decided to post what I had, believing that I couldn't find out any more without visiting some Italian archives, perhaps in Milan.

I received a comment from a reader this morning that said she had spoken with a descendant of Rosita Levi Pisetzky about 10 years ago on the phone in Milan. Sitting down at my computer after work today, I suddenly decided on a different set of search words and bam! I finally discovered something. Not searching in the field of textiles at all, but searching in the history of Milan.

On the website Storia di Milano, the death (in Milan) of Rosita Levi Pisetzky is listed as an event on the 18th of January, 1985. Inputting the event sentence as written on the Storia di Milano website into Google produced a link to the bookseller Maremagnum which had a rather informed bit of information on the author of the encyclopedia set that I told you about yesterday including her birthdate of 1898. This means she published the history of costume in Italy encyclopedia set when she was about 66 years old... and the book that I have, Il costume e la moda nella società italiana when she was 80!

Further searches brought me to the source of this information on Google Books which comes from an entry in the Dizionario della Moda [Dictionary of Fashion] by Guido Vergani, 2010. Here is a translation:

Levi Pisetzky, Rosita (1898-1985) Clothing historian. An intellectual from the Milanese upper-middle class, she was defined as "The Lady of Italian Costume" by Guido Lopez in an article written after her death in 1985. A self-taught historian with a life passed in studying archives, literary texts and iconographic sources, she published the most important treatises on the history of costume in Italy. Her first studies came out between 1937 and '38 in various women's magazines and journals. The articles on the history of the lace of that period remain notable for their careful research.

Between 1954 and '62 she wrote about the history of costume in the various epochs for the "History of Milan" published by Treccani in 16 volumes. These studies were expanded and then printed in a work of five volumes edited by the Italian Editorial Institute under the title "Storia del costume in Italia" between 1964 and '68. In 1978 Einaudi published "Il costume e la moda nella società italiana", further development and updating of her historical research. She was the first to treat the subject in a serious way, studying dress as a means of communication and social document. 

In her later years, she donated her own specialized library to the Collection of Bertarelli Prints of Milan, and her collection of vintage clothes to the Civic Collections of Applied Art of Milan, both located in the Castello Sforzesco, where they are still accessible today.

After her death, her wardrobe was donated by her family to the Bertarelli. It is an interesting collection of tailored garments of Milanese manufacture from the 1950s and '60s.

-- Virginia Hill 

Now isn't that a treasure trove of leads to follow up? I've been to the Castello Sforzesco in Milan too, and obviously didn't understand what I was looking at or missed it completely! I'll have to go back!

Castello Sforzesco in Milan. Image from Wikipedia.

I hope this gives those who are interested some more to go on. I'll post again when I've got more info.