Customer Reviews

Early American Embroidery Designs: An 1815 Manuscript Album with Over 190 Patterns (Dover Embroidery, Needlepoint)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The album containing drawn designs by Elizabeth M. Townshend in 1815 provides a wonderful moment captured in time. The drawings allow the viewer to observe authentic designs drafted by a women during the early nineteenth century. Since there is no background information about the artist, the publisher offers possibilities concerning the uses of the patterns in the book, which helps establish documentation for those readers searching for such. What makes the images so great is knowing they are authentic and unaltered. Many of the designs appear to be for borders on bed linens, petticoats, and waistcoats. The designs are easy to reproduce and appear to be to scale. For those who re-enact the Revolutionary War and look for documentation, you will find what you need in this book.

This book has a wide variety of borders suitable for linens and hand towels and for use in hand embroidery. There are a good variety of sizes, shapes, motifs, and density to satisfy many needs. Inking in book dense enough to copy on light weight fabrics, but will require retracing for linen weight fabrics. I would highly recommend this book for the hand embroiderer interested in early American and Victorian embroidery.

All of the designs are either borders or small in size but could work fine if enlarged slightly for crewel embroidery. Not very good for goldwork though.

I got this book for ideas for machine embroidery. It is an excellent book with designs I can easily translate into a machine embroidery patterns for digitizing. It is a good book with the old fashioned inspiration I needed. Note this book would be great for hand stitches also.