I referred to my Day Job again yesterday. Here’s a picture of one of the three new interpreters we dressed (i.e. prepared a full set of period clothing for) over the last two weeks. She started on site last Saturday and is having a great time. Thought you’d like to see what we’ve been up to. (Ooof. Just copied the photo to Bloggie & have to apologize for the poor quality. Uncharacteristically, I only took the one.)

 

Thanks to everyone who chimed in on the reversible embroidery question. I’ll post some excerpts from the comments:

 

Linda V, whose reversible embroidery I showed in last week’s post, wrote:

Good question, Jill. Both the cross stitch with an extra leg and the one on my piece are known in various places as marking stitch. There’s also a reversible cross stitch where only one half of one leg is doubled on the back and one half of one leg is doubled on the front. The last technique I know has a full cross with no legs doubled on either side, but it’s done in two separate passes.

 

Karla says:

The marking cross as I learned it does indeed have an extra leg. There are some commercial patterns and class that teach it. Montenegrin is another stitch that is reversible.

There is another stitch that is truly reversible cross stitch. One comes up in the center of the stitch and at least some of the legs are actually two half crosses butted up against each other. It’s called the 7 stitch marking stitch. I learned it in a class from Drawn Thread and haven’t seen it elsewhere, so it’s probably not an historic stitch. But it does make a totally reversible, identical cross.

 

Linda, like a number of our volunteer embroiderers, is also an embroidery teacher. She has designed a small sampler which teaches four methods of making a reversible cross stitch. I think she brought it to the session – is it the little alphabet one that was hemmed? Anyway, she wondered if anyone (that is, anyone besides me) would like to know where to buy copies of that pattern. If you send me the info, Linda, I’ll post it. If there’s a link send that too.

 

The second photo is of Carol’s hand working on a foxglove. It’s from Lilia’s series of “hands” images from the September session. You can see the magnifier to the left.