As Winter Comes....

Aren't you glad we don't have to do our washing like this anymore?

The little girl on the right is my Grandmother (Oma) Josephine. She was born in 1904 and would have been around 8 years old here which makes this photo 100 years old this year.

Looking back at old photos makes me ponder over how difficult life would have been back then. Just to have to carry heavy loads of washing out into open air and hand wash every piece of clothing in an open barrel and then wring them out and hang them out to dry. Ofcourse I imagine they didn't have as many clothes as we do today either so washing day was once a week, depending on how many children you had I suppose.

Today a lovely new Stitching book arrived that I ordered on Ebay from Stitchery Express.

A Stitchers Journey by Blackbird Designs

I sat with my cup of tea this afternoon and looked over all the lovely handiwork of young girls in days gone by.

Girls of my Grandmothers era who would all have learnt to stitch and sew and do needlework as part of their home education. There are some lovely small projects in here that I am longing to do.

I also got the three Loose Feathers designs from Blackbird Designs in time for my winter stitching.

Summer is the first in the series and they can be stitched either individually or all together as one long piece.

Autumn is second in the series

...and last of all Winter. I'm wondering why Spring wasn't incorporated as part of the design too?

This is another old photo I wanted to share of my Grandfather who was a tailor in Graz, Austria from the 1920s until he died in 1973.

He taught my father who was also a tailor in Austria but gave it up when he immegrated to Australia because there was just no money to be made in the rag trade here once everything was being imported from overseas. See that old iron he's using???

Well here it is as our door stop! Seems a shame that it doesn't work anymore.

So until winter comes I'll be busy stitching this lovely piece from The Gold Collection from Dimensions.