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.

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.

Music and words by Jon Althoff and Nathan Stiff.

Things That Never Die

 Things That Never Die

The pure, the bright, the beautiful,
That stirred our hearts in youth,
The impulse to a wordless prayer,
The dreams of love and truth;
The longings after something lost,
The spirit's yearning cry,
The strivings after better hopes--
These things can never die.
The timid hand stretched forth to aid
A brother in his need,
The kindly word in grief's dark hour
That proves a friend indeed;
The plea for mercy gently breathed
When justice threatens high,
The sorrow of a contrite heart--
These things shall never die.
The memory of a clasping hand,
The pressure of a kiss,
And all the trifles, sweet and frail,
That make up love's first bliss;
If with a firm unchanging faith,
And holy trust on high,
Those hands have clasped, those lips have met--
These things shall never die.
The cruel and the bitter word
That wounded as it fell;
The chilling want of sympathy
We feel but never tell;
The hard repulse that grieves the heart
Whose hopes were bounding high
In an unfading record kept--
These things shall never die.
Let nothing pass, for every hand
Must find some work to do;
Lose not a chance to waken love--
Be firm, and just, and true:
So shall a light that cannot fade
Beam on thee from on high,
And angel voices say to thee--
"These things shall never die."

by Sarah Doudney

Heaven A Locality

Outer space

       I am at a loss to understand why there should be difficulty in receiving the idea of heaven a locality - a fact of materiality, within the domain of physics, equally positive with the existence of Jupiter or Saturn, Venus or Uranus. The telescope, it is most true, has given wondrous revelations of the magnitude and the magnificence of God's glorious universe; but even that has not been able to reveal the secrets of the milky way, nor to calculate the distances of the nearest of the fixed stars, as the astronomer will tell you. But when we come to think, as is most probably true in fact, that with all the wonders thus laid open to our view - and they are most stupendous - we stand as yet but within the vestibule of God's great temple. Like Newton, we saunter along picking up here and there a pebble from the shore, the great ocean of truth meanwhile lying all unexplored beyond us. I doubt not that, could we but see them, as in prophetic vision, we should behold myriads upon myriads of shining orbs peopling the infinitudes of space, and of which the most accurate of all the sciences has not conceived the most remote idea. Inasmuch, then, as we as yet know nothing in comparison of what yet remains to be revealed to the eye of science, how dare we presume to say that the idea of heaven as a locality is a Utopian figment of the imagination - a mere poetic creation? We have picked up a sand or two from the beach, and say these are all there is of them! We have become slightly acquainted with the wonders of this, our own solar universe, and from that premise attempt the impossible feat of proving a negative, predicating the non-existence of any other!

       Most assuredly, since God has found place for the worlds we do see, He is of might sufficient to the finding of room in the vast depths of space for the heaven or heavens which at present we do not see? Rev. W. H. Cooper, D. D.

"The Only Scars In Heaven" sung by Casting Crowns.