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!

This one has that bold, trendy Halloween look that would be right at home on a sweatshirt, tote bag, or anything else you want to give a bit of spooky-season personality. The Spooky Season Embroidery Design from MySimplyEmbroidery is a digital machine embroidery file, and the listing shows it as an instant download with 1 PDF and 1 ZIP file included.

What makes this design stand out is the graphic style. The listing images show the words “Spooky Season” in a drippy Halloween-style font, with a skeleton, bats, a spider web, a cat, and a spider worked into the layout. It feels modern and playful rather than old-fashioned Halloween, so I can see it appealing to stitchers who like seasonal embroidery with a more current boutique-shop vibe.

From a practical point of view, the file comes in three large sizes: 7.56 x 4.55 inches, 8.64 x 5.20 inches, and 9.23 x 5.55 inches, with stitch counts from 15,471 to 19,038. The included formats are DST, EXP, JEF, HUS, PCS, PEC, PES, VIP, VP3, and XXX, and the listing says a production worksheet in PDF is included as well.

The seller also notes that the design was manually digitized, which is always a nice detail to see on a machine embroidery listing. The usual embroidery-download reminders are there too: you need an embroidery machine and know how to transfer the file, and the seller says they are not responsible for design quality if the file is resized, converted, or edited. The listing also allows buyers to use the files for personal projects or items to sell, but not to resell or distribute the design itself.

From the shop side, this one looks reassuring even though the item itself has no reviews yet. Etsy shows MySimplyEmbroidery with a 4.9 rating from 213 reviews, 1.9k sales, and 3 years on Etsy, and the seller is listed as usually responding within 24 hours. The shop is based in Krakow, Poland.

Have you read?