Stitch along with Jane Austen

I received a lovely note from Jennifer Forest, telling me a bit about her book, Jane Austen’s Sewing Box. Jennifer says,

A few years ago I was reading again Jane Austen’s novels when I noticed that her women were often sewing, netting, embroidering or knotting. Intrigued, I started reading earnestly to see what other crafts they were doing and started doing some historical research to uncover the Regency craft skills. Out of that grew Jane Austen’s Sewing Box.
From my research into the craft worked by Jane Austen, her characters and her circle of friends and family, I have then put each of the 18 craft projects in the book in its historical and literary context. With a professional background in history, I used real Regency objects to inspire craft projects for the modern crafty person (for example I use modern materials and tools which are true to the period but can be easily purchased today). My book does include a wide range of projects from sewing, needlework, knitting to netting, knotting and paper flowers. The book is available online from many stores and came out in the UK in July.

I have to get my hands on this book! It’s available from Amazon.com, as well as many other sources, I’m sure. If you have a copy, please post a comment and let us know which projects you tried. And thank you so much for the heads-up, Jennifer!

Hanukkah is a great reason to pull out your cross stitch fabric and thread and stitch up some fun seasonal cross stitch patterns.

If you have trouble spelling Hanukkah (I know I do!) you’ll want to stitch up the How Do You Spell… project from SKB Cross Stitch Design. This one includes a bunch of different ways to spell the holiday, along with some symbols like a dreidel and menorah. (Technically I think all the ways to spell it are “correct.”) The pattern includes full, fractional and bask titches, and measures 8.5 by 7 inches, or 21.6 by 17.8 cm. It has the date for 2004/5785 but you can easily change the year or leave that part off.

Another project with some fun word play is the Words to Live By chart from Sam Brie Stitches. This one includes Hanukkah related symbols and word presented crossword puzzle style, which is fun to stitch and to display. The design uses 10 colors and measures 74 by 103 stitches. It’s shown worked on 18 count fabric.

I may have shared these before, but the Hanukkah patterns from the Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery are so cute they’re definitely worth sharing again. Happy Hanukkah features a menorah, dreidels, gelt, stars and candles, and it fits in a 6-inch hoop. At 75 by 75 stitches, it comes out to 5.4 inches/13.4 cm on 14 count Aida or 28 count linen. They also have this cute little dreidel stamp cross stitch pattern, which is 39 by 49 stitches, or 2.8 by 3.5 inches (about 7 by 9 cm) on 14 count Aida or 28 count linen.

Works By ABC has a lot of great patterns for Hanukkah, but here are just a couple to get you started. The Rules for Dreidel design is fun for kids and adults and shows the different sides of the dreidel and what it means when you land on them. The stitch count is 62 by 94 and its shown worked on 32 count linen. It calls for three colors. I also like this menorah one, which measures 44 by 49 stitches and uses two colors along with coordinating seed beads. On 32 count linen as shown (equivalent to 16 count Aida) it measures 2.75 by 3.1 inches, or almost 7 by 7.8 cm.

Have you read?