Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Utility stitches .....

...taking some photos of my tiny stitches on my blocks.... talking out loud of course, to anybody who would listen.... mentioning about utility stitches and how the women of old used them so neatly to piece things together and make them look pretty, and how they were the basis, really, of our stitching classes with Karen... etc.....

Here I've done tiny stab stitches
















Here, a tiny running stitch along some silk edges..
















They may, or may not, be finished with just the little utility stitching...but, I'll wait til I get all the blocks pieced to make more decisions on that.


All of a sudden.... Mr. BV was beside me .... holding something.... and saying he had "something that I could practice my utility stitching on" ....

I looked up from the fun stuff and discovered this ....
















.....a button had totally broken in the centre and come off his slacks...... sigh....yep...that'd be utility all right.... right back to basics.


One of the few things that I could do for years.... stitch on buttons and hem slacks and dresses by hand...seeing as I didn't have a machine and...didn't know how to use one anyway.....  some days I got lazy and took them to the cleaners and had them stitch hems...but, they got to be over $12 each pair and I got penurious.... especially when we were saving for this house.



8 comments:

Mary Ann Tate said...

Lovely:) I always stitch hems by hand anyway because I enjoy doing it.

Magpie's Mumblings said...

There is true beauty in utility stitches, especially when they're used on something special.

Shashi Nayagam said...

Looks very pretty.

Twiglet said...

I like a bit of utility stitching - quite theraputic. x Jo

Anonymous said...

After I was given a sewing machine when I was 16, my mother never sewed another stitch, handing all mending jobs to me. It didn't matter that the work couldn't actually be done on the machine, now that I had a machine I coud do it!!

BeadedTail said...

Looks pretty complicated to me but with a name like utility it must be important!

Lin said...

Mending is a dying art. I always wonder what my kids are gonna do when I'm dead and gone. I guess they are gonna either learn or pay to have buttons sewn on. Imagine that?! I can't.

Karen said...

your utility stitching has certainly brightened my day and I adore the green...
http://karenannruane.typepad.com/karen_ruane/