Thursday, July 17, 2008

L'ane et le chien

I fell in love with antique embroidery booklets after seeing a bunch of them posted on some French blogs. I was excited to find one that had a cross stitch design with both a dog and donkey in it. I finished stitching it last week. It's way too big to turn into an ornament so I could make it into a pillow but that would involve using a sewing machine and we all know I haven't done that since junior high.


L'ane et al chien
Originally uploaded by PipStitch


Stitched on 18 ct Fiddlers with DMC 931. You can find the chart in Sajou 104 on this page (click the photo for the pdf of the entire booklet).

To see all of the embroidery books on Swappons, go here and then click each cover.

I would love to link to an English translation of the Swappons blog but both Google and Babel Fish are telling me "the requested URLs" are not available on their servers. Whatever. Funny how they have worked every other time I've used them. I'll try again later.

You can find more of these old booklets at les Passe-Temps de Flo (and again Google will not translate it into English). Most of these charts are for cross stitch but I know I've seen some with embroidery patterns. I don't know where they came from since I can't translate the entry but on this post at the same blog are three embroidery patterns with flowers and a pretty alphabet. And, this one has both embroidery and cross stitch flower patterns.

Another site with some of these old charts is Handmade Adelaide. You can find them here and here. (Thanks to Diane for those links!)

There's a new Stitch School post at Primrose Design on Chicken Scratch with some close-up photos of the stitches. And, The Sampler Girl is having a giveaway for a totebag with her Emily Dickinson x-stitch design printed on it.

8 comments:

Jane said...

love this cross stitch, looks so effective in blue

Anonymous said...

I've seen that chicken scratch on some French blogs. Supposedly it's sweeping Europe! lol.

~Niki~ said...

Hi Patty! Come read my HE** update LOL

Anonymous said...

Your stitching is beautiful.
Come on, use the sewing machine and make it into a pillow!
Would be a shame to have a piece like this lying unfinished in a drawer.

Twyla and Lindsey said...

I love your finished cross stitch piece. Absolutely beautiful. I must look up that pattern and do it myself. I love the French cross stitch blogs, but I am having the same problem with babel fish. I hope it is just a temperary problem. Thanks for sharing the other links! Twyla

I am Arizona; a person, not a place. said...

Oh, I love this! Its so pretty! For some reason, I'm such a sucker for french stitchery...i think i should have taken french in high school and college instead of german!! lol!

Lil_Birdie said...

It's really beautiful in blue .
That would make a really nice pillow ... machine is not that hard to use :)

woof nanny said...

You could always hand stitch it...
I have a group on flickr of vintage embroidery patterns
http://flickr.com/groups/341081@N20/