neonfoxtongue

Score, part II! Vintage Needlecraft Book and Magazine

I must be on a roll!  Just last week, I discovered (and recovered) some vintage children's books that my mother-in-law was going to donate to a charity book sale.  And when I was back home for Mother's Day, my mom showed me the great craft books and magazines that my Oma (that's Grandma in German) had brought over to the house.  My mom is looking to do some needlework/embroidery on some lovely fabric she picked up in Lebanon so she kept one of the books.  I perused the remaining collection and took with me the two that interested me most.  The rest can stay at my parents until The Leopard and I have a place of our own.

I picked a book and a magazine; both of which have a needlecraft focus.  The Good Housekeeping magazine was particularly neat because it was published a few months before I was born! (Yep, I'm that old.)

 

Of course, not everything in the magazine is my style exactly...

 

Um...no.

But I liked quite a few projects:

It's not a great pic, but I love the hippo and the giraffe - so cute!

 

This is almost like something you'd find at Anthropologie these days.  The magazine also has some decent knitted sweater patterns that I will hopefully be able to figure out one day.

The book is called McCall's Big Book of Country Needlecrafts (published in 1983) and it features 150 projects!

 

Again, I can't say I'm keen on all the projects, but there are some really lovely ones.

 

I admit that I can be a bit picky about quilt patterns, but this one is really stunning.

 

There are lots of great cross stitch and embroidery patterns, like this chair seat cover.

  

 And one great feature is that most of the patterns are on grids so you could use them in a variety of mediums.  This pattern is actually for crochet, but I think it could be easily adapted for cross stitch.

I absolutely love this apple series!  It doesn't seem 'country' to me at all!

And this box makes me want to learn crewel.  Isn't it gorgeous?

In addition to the books, I also took a couple of older cross stitch and embroider projects that my mom had been storing for me, as well as some extra cloth and floss.  I'm looking forward to getting back into cross stitch and learning some real embroidery stitches (I usually make them up as I go along). These new (to me) resources should help with that.

Here's hoping my luck with crafty finds and inspiration doesn't run out! :)

nft travels: patterns II - windows

Happy Wednesday!  I'm still feeling good after a very pleasant evening at The Workroom's Stitch 'n Bitch.  I met Karyn, the very cool owner of The Workroom as well as some other lovely people, including Shannon Gerard (Etsy shop here) who crochets like a MACHINE!  She's also a very talented illustrator and very nice.  I'm really glad I went.  As soon as I'm working and have a disposable income, I plan on taking a sewing class there.

In the meantime, I'll have to settle for mostly free craft activities.  Like blogging!  As promised last week, I'm going to post more pics of neat-o patterns I found during my travels in Eastern Europe in March.  Today I'm going to focus on windows.  We of course saw some lovely stained glass windows in the churches we visited, but I don't take photos in churches (even when it's permitted), so I don't have any of those.  But I did get photos of the stained glass windows at the Hungarian Parliament (can you tell I love that building?) and also at a hotel we stayed at in Romania.

We arrived in Oradea, Romania (near the Hungarian border) in the evening and hadn't booked a place to stay.  After an unsuccessful attempt at finding the one hostel in the city (we had a pamphlet, but the place wasn't at the address it listed), we decided to follow our Lonely Planet (Romania)'s advice and enquire at the one remaining budget hotel in the downtown area.  Luckily for us, they had a room available - actually, they probably had several available (cash only). The Hotel Parc, originally built in 1785 and expanded in the early 1900s (and presumable turned into a hotel at this point), is on the main pedestrian shopping street of Oradea.  At one point, it must have been quite a grand place, but it was pretty shabby.  And a bit creepy at night.  In fact, I had to actively prevent myself from thinking about scenes from The Shining.  But it was cheap, warm and clean (apart from the mould in the bathroom, but mould was ubiquitous in Romania so we were used to it by then).  And in the daylight, parts of it were quite beautiful.  Especially the windows and doors.

 

This is a window in the stairwell - isn't it pretty?  The plaster decorative accents were throughout the halls as well.

 

This is the front door.  Anyone who knows me knows that I love Art Nouveau (and Art Deco for that matter), so this door was a real treat.  I'd love to live in a place with gorgeous iron work like that.

From Oradea, we headed straigth to Budapest, Hungary, so a couple of days later we visited the Parliament, where, along with pics I posted last week, I snapped photos of the windows.

 

Sorry about the lousy quality - we weren't allowed to use a flash in that room.  I love the main diamond and circle pattern - definitely want to play with it in cross stitch!

 

All the patterns in this window are great, but I was especially taken with the side borders.  I like the mix of geometric shapes with organic ones.

I hope you're liking these posts about travels and patterns.  I got a sketch book from my mom on the weekend, so I'm keen to start doodling some of these patterns and seeing where they take me!

nft travels: patterns, patterns everywhere!

Seeing I don't really have any new projects to post, I thought I'd blog about the great decorative patterns I saw on the month-long trip The Leopard and I took in Eastern Europe.  I love decorative patterns in architecture and Europe is full of great examples. Today I want to show you just a few of the patterns I saw inside the very beautiful Hungarian Parliament.  It's a gorgeous building with incredible craftsmanship which my camera couldn't quite capture, but I hope you'll get an idea of the level of decorative detail.

 
Most of the door frames were adorned with lovely gilded patterns such as this one.

 
A decorated ceiling - one of many

  
A pillar - love this design, like upscale folk-art!

I'm hoping to use some of these designs for inspiration for embroidery and linocut patterns.  I really like how natural elements and shapes have been simplified and repeated. It'll probably take a bit of practice before I can make my own patterns, but it'll definitely be worth it!

Hope you liked these patterns.  I'll post some more next week.