Reader’s Embroidery: Chair Seat

Pam has done something I’ve always wanted to do, but never had the guts to. Using a design from Therese Dillmont’s book, La Broderie Au Passé, she embroidered a piece of fabric to fit the seat of an antique chair, and the results are beautiful!

The embroidery for this chair seat is worked on cotton twill, using DMC threads. The design was a perfect fit for these chairs that belonged to her grandmother.

The colors chosen for the needlework are gorgeous – I agree with Pam that they compliment the wood of the chair really well.

Pam used a variety of stitches with two strands, and sometimes four strands, of DMC.

The majority of the filled areas are worked in satin stitch, though it looks like she also used some buttonhole-type filling or trellis stitch in parts.

Isn’t the medallion a perfect fit? And far too pretty to sit on!

You can find this particular pattern in Therese Dillmont’s book, La Broderie Au Passé, at Antique Pattern Library. The book comes in four parts, and this particular pattern is in Part 3, on page 4 of the PDF. (That link will take you straight to the PDF of Part 3). You can also see this particular pattern on the frame, in the first page of the introduction in Part 1 of Dillmont’s book. (PDF link) Although the picture is in black and white, it’s interesting because the pattern is being worked on a dark background. This is one of my favorite books at Antique Pattern Library – it has a really nice collection of designs for “flat” embroidery! The fourth PDF, by the way, is a scan of the German version of the book.

Thanks, Pam, for sending the photos, and congratulations on a beautiful job! Thanks as well for the inspiration…. maybe, maybe one of these days, I’ll get up the guts to do a footstool or something! (But feet? On my embroidery? Hmm…..)