Finally catching up with myself today after an ‘out of sorts’ kinda week. Spending the day designing new jewellery motifs so will be back to sharing my work in progress soon.

In the meantime, thought I would share some amazing vintage embroidery guides and pattern books given to my mum recently. Obviously I love looking at all the designs, but the really fascinating thing is the social window it provides, and how obviously important needlework was in the home back then.

Sit back and enjoy, stitching geeks.

These magazines are from the 40s:

Look at the too-cute ads inside:

And these French guides from DMC and Recko, also from the 40s and 50s. Lots of upholstery designs and sampler alphabets:

And this one which is 100 years old!

Look – claimed 99 years ago!:

Full of lovely traditional Crewel designs, very simple instructions (assumes you knew what you’re doing) and hand-coloured plates: