Needlework Notes from Mackenzie House

Don't you long to have one of these to hold your knitting yarn? Last weekend my friend Mark and I visited Mackenzie House, a former home of the publisher and 1837 Rebellion leader William Lyon Mackenzie. Because of his newspaper publishing history, there's an antique printing shop in a rear addition to the home. This is used there (as you see) to hold a ball of twine, but apparently every knitter who goes through expresses a fervent wish to have one just like it. (In my case, it would go a long way towards solving the problem of cat attacks.

This "slipper chair"(a term for a low, armless upholstered chair) is one of the few original pieces of furniture in the house. It was needlepointed by Janet "Jennie" Mackenzie (1829-1906) sometime in the mid-19th century (the house has been restored to an 1860s appearance). She was a daughter of William Lyon Mackenzie who married Charles Lindsey, a newspaperman and biographer of Mackenzie.

I'm not crazy about the design myself, but I'm wondereing whether the colours might have been different when it was made 150 years ago. I'd like it better if the greens were less brown and drab... which perhaps they were. It shows a date palm and other tropical foliage; apparently Egypt was in vogue at the time. The pale blue background is worked with beads, which must have taken ages to do!

I do think the pleated green velvet edging is a clever workaround for getting the needlepoint to fit nicely over the curved edges of the seat. I'm pretty sure it would have been brighter back in the day. I wonder whether "Jennie" did the upholstery herself. It's held up very well!

Photo credit: Mark D'Aguilar

Needlecraft Magazine 1923

We may think we're all very crafty these days, but we're rank amateurs compared to those young women who lived between about 1880 and 1940. This was the time when a lot of women had been freed from the most appalling of the housekeeping drudgery by the innovations that followed the Industrial Revolution – like gas or electric stoves and free-flowing hot water for all.

They were also beginning to trickle into the workforce, so they had a little money, and some of them even lived in their own places for a few years before marriage. As new wives, many had a little bit of pocket money and leisure, and they wanted to make their families' homes and wardrobes lovely (as who doesn't?), so they indulged in all kinds of ambitious and purely decorative needlework of a kind that in earlier centuries had been available only to the wealthy.

The cover of this issue of Needlecraft Magazine of October 1923 illustrates "A Bewitching Bedroom-Set in Embroidered Applique", featuring curtains, a bedspread and a bolster cover (which, of course, one made oneself) worked in an Art Deco pattern showing a basket of California poppies.

The patterns (iron-on or perforated for stamping on guide marks) were available by mail for between 25 and 40 cents, or you could buy prestamped fabric to make the various items for between $1 and $3.70. "All in all, a decoration prettier to look at and simpler to do cannot well be imagined," enthuses Nina L. Willis, author of the article describing the project. Just shows what people were able to accomplish in the days before television!