A Poppy Design for A Round Table

       The floral design pictured you can readily transfer to linen, leather or burlap by inserting a sheet of carbon, or tracing paper between the design and fabric, then going over all the lines of the design with a stylus or sharp pencil.
      You will then find the lines on the fabric distinct enough to follow in your embroidery. 
      This historic pattern has a lovely all-over design using poppies, their buds and leaves. Victorians loved to display a decorative vase with a bouquet, prominently in the center of a table covering like the one included here.
       Use brilliant reds, oranges and pinks to emphasize the design in your own version!

A draft of the historic poppy pattern.

Embroider Butterflies of Brilliant Hue

    Bright colored butterflies bring a feeling of joy and sunshine to one's work, and these dainty little creatures are charming in flower pieces or as separate motifs on table mats, curtains, dressing-table runners, and other household articles.
      Butterflies are so easy to work that no one need fear to attempt them, especially with the help afforded by the varied selection on the color samples shown below, and the chart, herewith, giving the direction for the stitches. These butterflies, also the dragonfly and bees, are originally from Weldon's Transfers (1900), you may reproduced tracings from the photo below in order to stitch butterflies similar to those embroidered at the turn of the last century.
      The wings are all worked on the same principle; the markings first in long and short stitch (or for the more definite spots and bands, in satin-stitch), and stem-stitch for veinings. All stitches should be directed towards the body. Between the markings the wings must be filled in with long and short stitch directed from their edge towards the body.
      For the body, long and short stitch can be worked lengthways, or rows of satin-stitch fitted one into the other, as shown on several of the specimens. The long and short stitch can be continued on the head, or this can be worked in satin-stitch. One or two little stitches of red or yellow, or some fairly bright color, are all that are required for the eyes.
      Stem-stitch or split-stitch gives a fine line for the antennae, which are tipped with one or two satin-stitches in the same direction as the stem or split-stitches. 

 

Color enhance reproduction of sample silk butterflies, bees and dragonfly by Weldon's Transfers, 1900.
This embroidery is done with fine silk threads.

 

 

Watch Malina embroider a silk butterfly using a satin stitch.

Jesus is God following us up...

"We sinned for no reason but an incomprehensible lack of love, and He saved
us for no reason but an incomprehensible excess of love." Peter Kreeft

        You see, the heart of God had been breaking - is breaking over the ways things have been going  down on this planet. Folk fail to understand  Him. Worse yet, they misunderstand Him, and  feel free to criticize Him. Nobody has been so much slandered as God. Many are utterly ignorant of Him. Many others who are not ignorant yet ignore Him. They turn their faces and backs. Some give Him the cut direct. The great crowd in every part of the world is yearning after Him: piteously, pathetically, most often speechlessly yearning, blindly groping along, with an intense inner tug after Him. They know the yearning. They feel the inner, upward tug. They don't understand what it is for which they yearn, nor what will satisfy.

       For man was made to live in closest touch with God. That is his native air. Out of that air his lungs are badly affected. This other air is too heavy. It's malarial, and full of gases and germy dust. In it he chokes and gasps. Yet he knows not why. He gropes about in the night made by his own shut eyes. He doesn't seem to know enough to open them. And sometimes he will not open them. For the hinge of the eye-lid is in the will. And having shut the light out, he gets tangled up in his ideas as to what is light. He puts darkness for light, and light for darkness.
       Once man knew God well; close up. And that means loved, gladly, freely. For here to know is to love. But one day a bad choice was made. And the choice made an ugly kink in his will. The whole trouble began there. A man sees through his will. That is his medium for the transmission of light. If it be twisted, his seeing, his understanding, is twisted. The twist in the will regulates the twist in the eye. Both ways, too, for a good change in the will in turn changes the eyes back to seeing straight. He that is willing to do the right shall clearly see the light.
       But that first kink seems to have been getting worse kinked ever since. And so man does not see God as He is. Man is cross-eyed Godward, but doesn't know it. Man is color-blind toward God. The blue of God's truth is to him an arousing, angering red. The soft, soothing green of His love becomes a noisy, irritating yellow. Nobody has been so much misunderstood as God. He has suffered misrepresentation from two quarters: His enemies and His friends. More from - which? Hard to tell. Jesus is God trying to tell men plainly what He is really like.
       The world turned down the wrong lane, and has been going that way pell-mell ever since. Yet so close is the wrong lane to the right that a single step will change lanes. Though many results of being in the wrong lane will not be changed by the change of lanes. It takes time to rest up the feet made sore by the roughness of the wrong lane. And some of the scars, where men have measured their length, seem to stay.
       The result of that wrong turning has been pitiable. Separation from God, so far as man could make separation. There is no separation on God's part. He has never changed. He remains in the world, but because of man's turning his face away, He remains as a stranger, unrecognized. He remains just where man left Him. And any one going back to that point in the road will find Him standing waiting with an eager light glistening in His eyes. No! That's not accurate. He is a hit nearer than ever He was. He is following us up. He is only a step off. Jesus is God eagerly following us up. S. D. Gordon

What Am I?

"Turn my eyes away from 
worthless things; preserve
my life according to
your word."
Psalm 119:37

What Am I? by Dr. Arbuthnot

What an I, whence produced, and for what end?
Whence drew I being, to what period tend?
Am I th' abandon'd orphan of blind chance,
Dropp'd by wild atoms in disordered dance?
Or, from an endless chain of causes wrought,
And of unthinking substance, born with thought?
Am I but what I seem, mere felsh and blood,
A branching channel with a mazy flood?
The purple stream that through my vessels glides,
Dull and unconscious flows, like common tides,
The pipes, through which the circling juices stray,
Are not that thinking I, no more than they;
This frame, compacted with transcendent skill,
Of moving joints, obedient to my will;
Nursed from the fruitful glebe, like yonder tree,
Waxes and wastes, -- I call it mine, not me,
New matter still the mould'ring mass sustains;
The mansion chang'd, the tenant still remains;
And, from the fleeting stream, repair'd by food,
Distinct, as is the swimmer from the flood.

Faith Taught by Nature

       Faith bids us be of good cheer. Long ago, that old Greek studied the mental operations of a bee, with brain not as large as a pin-head. Here is a little bee, that organizes a city, that builds ten thousand cells for honey, twelve thousand cells for larvae, a holy of holies for the mother queen; a little bee that observes the increasing heat and when the wax may melt and the honey be lost, organizes the swarm into squads, puts sentinels at the entrances, glues the feet down, and then with flying wings, creates a system of ventilation to cool the honey, that makes an electric fan seem tawdry– a little honey-bee that will include twenty square miles in the field over whose flowers it has oversight. But if a tiny brain in a bee performs such wonders providential, who are you, that you should question the guidance of God? Lift up your eyes, and behold the hand that supports these stars, without pillars, the God who guides the planets without collision. Away with fear! -N. D. Hillis.