WENDY’S DRESSMAKERS

Taranaki Daily News, 28 April 1934, Page 9 (Supplement)

WENDY’S DRESSMAKERS

A WOOL DOOR MAT. This week's “special request'' lesson is how to make a little wool mat to go by the door. You will not need any special tools for the one we have designed—just ordinary wide-meashed canvas, skeins of thick rug-wool, and a bodkin will do. The average size of a mat like this is thirty inches long and fourteen inches wide, so you will want a piece of canvas measuring thirty-two inches by sixteen, the extra inch all round being for turnings. Tack the hem and work the first rows of wool skeins of rug-wool in various colours for threepence each. Our model mat took three skeins of brown and one of orange. If you don’t care for this scheme, get three skeins of your chosen coloui’ for the outside and middle panel, and one skein'of a contrasting shade for the inner boarder. Having turned in and tacked the oneinch hem all round, measure two inches in and rule lines to mark the outer border which will, of course, be two inches wide. Then measure two inches in from these lines, and rule four more lines to give you the central panel, which will be twenty-two inches long and six inches deep. You will find it best to outline these panels as soon as you have marked them, so . work over the first set of pencilled lines in orange—or your chosen lighter colour—and the second set in brown, or the darker of your two shades. This is how you work the lines. It is a very simple sort of double cross-stitch, which makes a nice thick pile. Look at diagram I. Thread tire bodkin with a length of wool, bring it up in the lefthand comer of one hole in the canvas, marked A, take it across to the opposite right-hand hole, marked B, put it in and bring it up again at C. Then take it across, and put it in at D, to make the first cross-stitch, shown complete in diagram 2. Next bring, the bodkin, up in

the canvas-hole opposite the centre of the first cross-stitch, shown at E in diagram 3, take it across to F, as shown in diagram 4, and bring it up again at G. Finally, put it in at H, and you will have a complete double cross-stitch, which is shown in diagram 5. All this has taken a long time to describe, but actually each stitch only takes a few seconds. Remember always to cross the stitches in the same direction, otherwise the finished effect will not be even. Fill in the outer border and the centre panel with the darker wool, then work the inner border in the lighter shade. Line the mat with plain hessian to make it firm and strong. Wendy’s Dressmaker.