Creating Stitching Adventures
Since 2002!

October 7-8, 2019
Monday and Tuesday at the
Publick House Historic Inn
Sturbridge, MA

Featuring Ellen Chester of
With My Needle


PROJECT:  A Lady's Worke Box

Project Description: Needlework, both plain and fancy, at one time played a very important role in the daily life of many girls and women. Therefore, a sewing or worke box was a cherished possession because it was a place to safely store needlework items.

For this project, you will make two embroidered panels and a silk lining for a wooden worke box. You will also make a needlebook with a Jacob’s Ladder binding, a pincushion, a three-sided scissors weight, and an embroidered panel for a wooden hornbook threadholder.



In class, we will be working on a small part of the project in order to introduce all of the stitches.  There is a lot of cross stitch on the project, but in addition you will be learning new stitches: alternating double backstitch, backstitch, closed herringbone, cross stitch over one linen thread, cushion (traditional and reverse slant), diamond eyelet, double-sided Italian, four-sided, herringbone, mosaic, plaited cross, Rhodes, Rhodes heart, rice stitch variation, Smyrna cross, tent, tied half Rhodes, and zigzag stitch.  You will get stitch diagrams for all of these stitches and you will have time in class to work on all of them.  Some people who want to just practice the stitches in class will bring a doodle cloth (a small piece of linen in the thread count they like best) and threads; they will wait and stitch on the project once they get home.  All of the stitch diagrams have the legs of the stitches clearly numbered so it's just a matter of following the numbers.  We've been told by stitchers that our stitch diagrams are among the best out there.   36-count linen is used for this project.

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