If you’re a connoisseur of old embroidery publications, you’ve probably heard of Thérèse de Dillmont, who was DMC’s featured embroidery expert for many of their embroidery publications produced in the 1800’s.
Though writing for DMC (a French company) and sporting a French name, Thérèse was, in fact, Austrian. She is perhaps best known for her Encyclopedia of Needlework, which can happily still be found in print through used book sources and can also be found online for free through places like Project Gutenberg.
Besides the Encyclopedia of Needlework, there are a ton of other publications with her name on them, including pattern books, technique books, books dedicated to specific regional embroidery techniques. I’ve been collecting publications with her name on them for many years, and I still stumble on one here and there that I had no idea existed! Many of her works are available online for free through Antique Pattern Library, too – they’re well worth exploring!
This gorgeous tray cloth was embroidered by Brigitte, as her first foray into non-counted embroidery. The cloth is about 12.5″ in diameter (32 cm).
The original Hungarian-style design was a straight band with an angle in it, intended as a shawl border. It came from a Thérèse de Dillmont album. Brigitte adapted the design to fit a circular tray (not an easy thing to do, to manipulate a straight line design into a circle!).
The embroidery is done with five different stitches.
The combination of black and light turquoise is very striking and it complements this design beautifully. So pretty!
Brigitte did a beautiful job on this piece, don’t you think? And it was her first “off the grid” embroidery! I love it!
If you would like to explore Thérèse de Dillmont a little further, be sure to check out many of her works (available for free) on Antique Pattern Library. They’re full of great designs!
Coming up, an “inside scoop” on embroidery classes, some new thread organization, some stitch instruction, and an introduction to possibly the craziest project I’ve ever been hornswoggled into undertaking!
