It has been a moment and a half since we did
a proper little scrap-busting project, hasn’t it? This time, I found this cute little pamphlet
on Instructions for Patchwork from 1884, and I thought we just had to give it a go. Especially because quite a few people
have such strong associations with Victorians being all prim and proper
but... this is just marvellous chaos. Perfect for the recovering perfectionist
and chaos goblins galore. We have sorted our plant fibre scraps into
some... neat and dandy piles. And, I’ve gone for most of the smaller scraps
because, I mean, the bigger scraps can more easily be used to sew up other things. But we have a petticoat that I made a while
ago, and of course the very cute patterned blouse that is very recent. And lots of linen bits and pieces because
I use quite a bit of linen. And even pieces of... pin tucks that I thought we could use,
you know, lay on the bottom and fold everything else on top, but... And of course darker pieces like a lot of
black cotton sateen that I do like to use for pockets, and... sleeve protectors and
what have you, uhm... Of course... we haven’t actually made a
proper dent in the big bags of scraps that are wool or slightly larger, so I do see more
scrap work in the future. But anyway... All work is progress, so... First off, J. F. Ingalls instructs us to take
“some firm goods the size you want the article”, and to baste small pieces of silk and satin
upon it in all sorts of irregular shapes. I thought this technique would make a cute
little portable knitting needle pouch for my project bag. To help stiffen the pouch a tiny bit and hopefully
protect my needles that little bit more, I am first pad stitching on some horsehair or
tailor’s canvas scraps to the main body. After that, it is just a matter of filling
the space with scraps any which way we fancy, folding in the edges as we go. Quick PSA; Don’t be stingy with the seam
allowance like I am in some places. Raw edges will poke out and you will curse yourself
for your overeager desire to try to optimise. Just add proper seam allowances. We have a... finished draft of sorts. I don’t know, did you have that thing where,
as a child when you had to write essays in school... you were given the draft paper and...
I would sort of just go mad all over the draft paper and just write sideways and diagonally
and in big letters, small letters... Complete chaos. Because it felt like if I
could get it out on the draft paper, I would be more able to write properly and prettily
on the final version of the essay or whatever we were writing. This kind of feels like the sewing equivalent
of that. It feels very nice and fun and like, just loose and crazy. And we have fun things like cutouts from when
we made a patchwork pillow and... you know, the hexagon 18th-century pocket things, and
other fun, little inclusions. And... now, all that is left to do is to sit down and
baste. So that we can remove all of these pins for the next step. Do you have to pin everything on in one go? Of course not. If you have a bigger project especially, I
would probably be working in chunks. But I figured as I had such a small, modest project,
I could get away with just doing everything in one go. Did we make a dent in the scrap piles? Not really, but the spirit is there. We are
trying our best. All right, let’s get to basting. To help me with this, I am using my faithful
linen thread and... bent but terribly comfortable sewing needle. Don’t judge me. It lays between my fingers
ever so snugly. I am also terrible and... rather than basting
stitches, I am doing some rather long backstitches. Just because I don’t fancy picking these
stitches out again when the embroidery is done. Even so, it was pretty fast work. The pins
make it easy to see which seams are still left to do. [Snip] After stitching I clean up the edges a little
bit. And these new scraps do get demoted to the pillow-stuffing pile of no-more-patchwork-wrangling. [Soot trills] And then it is time to dig out our little
box of hand-me-down embroidery floss and get to the real quirky fun of it all. The booklet does recommend that we use “waste
silk” as the best and cheapest embroidery floss. I couldn’t quite figure out exactly
what they refer to, but my best guess would be things like the unworkable ends of silk
weaving warps from the silk industry in Cheshire, for instance. And the dark blue I use in parts of this project
is exactly such a waste warp from a previous project! But other than that,
most of my floss is cotton. The stitches they have us use in the booklet
are referred to as “point Russe stitches”. The most well-known of these stitches form
little fan-shaped motifs. But we see other stitches like feather stitch, herringbone
stitch, and French knots as well. [Paper rustle] This type of embroidery was really popular
in the 1870 and 1880’s in parts of North America and Europe, as part of a larger tradition
of embroidery called Breton work, originating in regional dress from France. Some of the stitches have little illustrations
of how they are done, but most of them don’t, leaving it for us to find out. The only guiding
principle being that you stitch down into the fabric and up into the next stitch
in the same motion. That way, the challenge becomes how to find the easiest and most thread-efficient
route through the various designs. If... that makes any sense at all. There is an interesting mix of really quite
elaborate stitches and much faster ones. A plain herringbone border like this one, for
instance, was nice to do in between the more time-consuming designs when you
need to feel a sense of progress. Correct me if I’m wrong but... this seems
like such an excellent project for struggling and recovering perfectionists. The work is meant to be loose and a bit mad.
If you don’t like a particular stitch you only need to do it until the end of the patch,
and you could even use it as a little portable stitch library where you test things before
a bigger project. If you give it a go, I really hope you have
fun with it. I certainly did. And after two days work we have... a thing! Quite reminiscent of the clothes of
cartoony undead characters to me. Now there’s a costume idea... But now that we finally have a fabric. Conveniently lined with
the backing fabric, we need only bind off
some edges and assemble. [Chonk snip] First with
some trusty linen tape at the bottom. [Light and cheerful music] [Wee snip] In theory, linen tape all around our pouch
should be enough to keep things where they ought to be, but I prefer to backstitch first,
just in case. After which, I trim the edges one last time
before binding them off too. [ASMR snip] We do need a closure of some kind, and these
wooden toggles have been in my stash for... who knows how long, so let’s use one. [Soot trills (offscreen)] And our small, but really rather time-consuming
scrap project is finished! With just an excellent amount of whimsy, and
a colour scheme dependent on whatever one has had the audacity to make with in the past. Wholeheartedly recommend. :)
