Mary Amelia’s Bird

I finished something! Being laid up with a bad cold this weekend allowed me to finish Mary Amelia’s bird! Isn’t she pretty? Stitched on the called for 36 count Duxbury with the called for DMCs.

I have a beautiful round frame but when I tried it out it is about a half inch too small and cuts off the tip of the tail and leaves. Boo. I like the idea of a round frame so I will start a hunt for a slightly bigger one.

This style of needlework is known as Berlin Work. I have to say that although I like this particular design and I love it has my grandma’s name, I do not love this style of stitching. Neither the fussy confetti nor the wacky colors that don’t shade well. I mean it looks great from a distance and in the photo but up close it makes no sense. Thinking about it I realized that my stitching is at 5 removals from the original art work. Berlin work would start as a drawing or painting, overlaid with a grid and transferred to graph paper. That would be published in a ladies journal or as a chart. The stitcher would select their own wool threads using their own color sense and what was available to her. In this case the stitcher, Mary Amelia age 7 (!), stitched on perforated paper. There were losses to the wool over the hundred plus years since she made it, and who knows how many of her own errors in the transfer from the graph to her work. Then 100+ years later, her work was recharted and reproduced in DMC cottons by Macey at Quaint Rose Needlearts, using HER best judgment and color sense and the available colors in the DMC palette. Ai yi yi. It’s a big game of telephone! If I cared to stitch it again I would shade all the colors better and pick some overdyed threads to make some of the flat parts more interesting. Especially that big mint green leaf. But it’s done I learned something and that is a triumph! Plus it has my grandma’s name and so is meaningful to me. So that’s what I think about that!! Moving right along!