A Pair of (Miniature) Floral Area Rugs

These had me utterly charmed from start to finish.  I first saw the charts in a book of filet crochet patterns, Le Filet Ancien au Point de Reprise V, at the wonderful Antique Pattern Library, and thought, "well, those look just like needlepoint charts!" -- these are on pages 59 and 60 of the PDF -- and the fact that there was a pair made them irresistible.  Who wouldn't want a pair of French floral area rugs on either side of their dollhouse bed?

(This particular book is in APL's "Filet" section, not the "Filet Crochet" section, I don't know why, but then I don't do filet crochet, so perhaps there is something that I don't understand.  There isn't a date that I can see, but AbeBooks and WorldCat citations indicate ca.1917-1920 for the series of at least eight books.)

The charts had some little eccentricities that I discovered as I worked, some of which I changed -- a random white stitch here and there on the roses chart, and I shifted the daisy bouquet up two stitches within the border to center it a little better and smoothed out an obvious jog in one spot on the outside edge -- and some of which I left as they were -- the ever-so-slightly irregular ovals, which are surprisingly (given how easy it is to mirror design elements on a chart!) not symmetrical.  While the asymmetricality bothered me quite a bit at times, looking at the chart, happily I don't think it detracts from the charm of the finished carpets at all.

I worked them in DMC floss 815 Garnet Medium and 712 Cream, on 40-count silk gauze.  I decided while stitching the set of cushions recently that despite conflicting advice ("always use half-cross stitch" -- "never use half-cross stitch"), I far prefer using continental stitch instead of half-cross. 

Half-cross stitch uses much less thread, as your needle is going only from one hole to an adjacent one either horizontally or vertically, while with continental stitch, your needle is going two holes away and up or down one -- like a knight's move in chess.  The resulting piece of needlepoint is noticeably thinner with half-cross, which in miniature scales can certainly make a difference, even in fine cottons or silks.  On the other hand, for myself I find it rather difficult to secure the beginnings and ends of threads under half-cross, since they tend to "sink" down into the weave of the canvas, especially non-interlock ones, and frankly, again despite some experts' very strong opinions, I find that for me the tension and resulting evenness of my stitching is just enough better in continental for it to be worth the slight extra thickness.  And I suppose it doesn't really matter since unless one is being judged at some competition, the petit-point carpet is always seen from the front, but with continental stitch, it's a bonus that the backs can be very tidy! --

It was also a bit of a revelation to me that rounded petit-point shapes can be edged with an edging stitch, at least on silk gauze at smaller scales.  I had heard that it couldn't be done, that a simple folding-under of the unworked canvas was the only option for a non-rectangular carpet, but after I had worked a few pieces on this gauze, it seemed to me that an edging stitch should actually work pretty well, partly because the silk simply folds more easily and sharply than cotton or linen does, and partly because of the extreme flexibility of the fabric itself.  You can see in the photo above how very easily the square holes realign themselves into parallelograms, and they did this even before I clipped the turning allowance.  This means that while you can't use an edging stitch that proceeds in a regular manner, you can fudge it a little, adjusting as you go to get the line to curve -- you can also see above how my stitches around the curves have a little jog every few stitches, where I followed the curve.  It is possible that you really can't do this on linen or cotton canvas, or on Aida or other non-evenweaves, but it is certainly possible on silk gauze.

The "braid" effect of the long-legged cross stitch edging is lost a bit with the uneven distances, so next time I will try a regular whip-stitch -- the coverage is better with the long-legged cross stitch, which I suspected would help disguise the potential bare spots.  It may not be as tidy as an edging stitch on a straight piece -- though that may also be due to my improvising, and so would get better with practice -- but I'm quite pleased with the results.  

 

Comments

[Dawn in NL]

Hello Jeanne, once again I so admire your miniature work. The bench made from scrap pieces (!) is fabulous. The cushions (I completely agree with you on the use of pillow and cushion by the way) are lovely and I think the different sizes make them look even more authentic.
Then your oval rugs, these would look great next to my bed, much better than the current IKEA ones.
Once again, I am looking forward to seeing all of these in situ.

[Susan D]

Excellent. You rock, Jeanne.

Update on my floral cushion. I unearthed the project again, and realised it was 40 mesh, not 30. Gamely took it to last night's minis meeting to work on, and had to admit I would never ever get any farther, so I simply said, Does anyone want this? One woman said, "Sure." And then she said, "Would you like it back when it's finished?"

Yes!

[Nancy M.]

Filet may be embroidery on net, instead of filet crochet

[Jeanne]

Well, there you are, then! Thank you for clearing that up, Nancy!