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A Bustle & Sew Publication Copyright © Bustle & Sew Limited 2021 The right of Helen Grimes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means, without the prior written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Every effort has been made to ensure that all the information in this book is accurate. However, due to differing conditions, tools and individual skills, the publisher cannot be responsible for any injuries, losses and other damages that may result from the use of the information in this book.
First published 2022 by: Bustle & Sew Station House West Cranmore Shepton Mallet BA4 4QP www.bustleandsew.com
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Welcome to the April Magazine Hello everyone! It’s April - tme for spring sunshine and April showers! The phrase “April showers” is believed to have its origins in an old English proverb dating back to the late eighteenth century. Surprisingly though there are likely to be plenty of showers, April is often one of our driest months with plenty of warm spring sunshine to enjoy. This is one of my favourite times to enjoy the garden - the magnolia is in full bloom, whilst the bees are buzzing around the horse chestnut candles. All around everything is bursting with life and growth - and it will soon be time to start cutting the lawn again! We celebrate spring between the covers of this edition with bunnies, chickens, eggs and more. We also take a moment to reflect upon the current situation in Ukraine with our peace banner - and hope that peace will soon return to that war torn region. And, a happier, though still topical project - there’s a little corgi pup softie in celebration of our Queen’s Platinum Jubilee later this year. I hope you enjoy this issue and the May Magazine will be published on Thursday 28 April. Until then I hope you have a lovely month, with lots of time for stitching! Very best wishes
Helen xx
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April A widespread traditional saying, reported from across the British Isles since at least the midsixteenth century, maintains that March borrowed three days from April; and so the last three days in March are called the “Borrowed Days” or “Borrowing Days.” There is a lot of confusion however about the result of this borrowing - surely it must mean that the last three days in March will be warmer and milder than they should be at this time of year and for three days in April to be unseasonably cold. But the weather at this time of year is so changeable anyway that goodness knows what’s really going on!
hundred years, remaining popular today.
it and to send him or her on to someone else.
Apprentices and newcomers in various occupations and trades were particularly likely to be the victims of April Fool’s jokes and
The origin of April Fool’s Day, the first day of the month, remains a mystery. It is first mentioned in the seventeenth century when John Aubrey states “Fooles Holy Day We observe it on ye first of April ad so it is kept in Germany everywhere.” It seems likely then, that the custom originated in France or Germany and became more popular over the next two
Traditional
Out in the open countryside, rising temperatures and lengthening days bring a cloud of blackthorn blossom. This large shrub, almost a tree in fact, is native to our islands. It forms thorny thickets that provide other plants with shelter from browsing and grazing animals, and secure nesting sites for many birds. Blackthorn flowers early when easterly winds can still bring severe weather. Traditionally known as “blackthorn winters” these sudden cold snaps remind us that April can indeed be a fickle month. The old saying “Cast ne’er a clout till May is out” refers not to the month of May, but to the blossoms of the May tree, known also as hawthorn. When its white flowers adorn our hedgerows then spring is finally here to stay.
“I have a little pussy, Her coatis silver grey, I found her in the meadow, Not very far away. My little silver pussy, Will never be a cat, Cos she’s a pussy-willow, Now what do you think of that?”
they could be sent to fetch items such as straight hooks, left-handed screwdrivers, striped paint or whatever was relevant to their particular trade. An italic full stop was popular in the printing trade. When the “fool” asked for each item, the trick was to treat the request seriously, claim not to have
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April brings the bursting open of buds to reveal vivid green spring leaves. This greening of the countryside is one of the joys of living in a temperate part of the
world where the seasons are so distinct. We are past the spring equinox now, and here in Britain the green flush of spring moves northwards up the length of the land at roughly a walking pace, from the Isles of Scilly in the south to Shetland in the far north.In our gardens, hedgerows and woodlands, fresh flowers are opening almost daily; yellow cowslips bloom on grassy banks, and in shady woodland spots you can see the green spires of bluebell leaves thrusting up through the leaf litter left from the previous autumn, and, by the end of the month, these will bloom in great sheets of brilliant bluebells that will carpet our woodland floors. So popular is this sight that people will travel miles to see the most famous bluebell woods. On warm days dandelion clocks are already dispersing their seeds in puffs of silver on the spring breezes while the creamy blossom of fruit trees along hedgerows and in orchards is another lovely April sight. In fruit orchards you may see bullfinches feeding on the flower buds, easily distinguishable from other finches by their rosy pink breast feathers. April 15 brings “Swallows Day” when, traditionally, the first swallows are expected to return to this country from their wintering grounds in Africa. Naturally the birds don’t
keep exactly to schedule (One swallow does not a summer make…) but once the warm weather returns in mid-spring then we will see the welcome return of these birds. Spring and Easter are of course inextricably linked and many of the secular customs associated with
“The cuckoo comes in April, and stays the month of May; sings a song at midsummer, and then goes away.”
Easter have their roots in pagan spring festivals. The very word “Easter” may be derived from “Eostre,” the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess associated with spring, or it may simply be related to “east” the direction of the dawn, the rebirth of the day - a symbol of new beginnings. The Anglo-Saxon name for April, the month in which Easter most frequently falls, was “Eastermonath.” Easter Day can fall on any date from 22 March to 22 April and this year Easter Sunday falls on April 17.
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Another slightly random fact… according to early English calendars, on 29 April “Egressus Noae de arca” (Noah left the Ark, having entered it on 17 March)! St Mark’s Eve falls on 24 April, and was an occasion for premonitions in affairs of the heart, for having either sweet dreams or nightmares - the ghost of a future love summoned to one’s side and also for forecasting death. St Mark’s Eve customs tend towards the dark side of ritual, involving strictly observed silence, midnight rites, blades of grass symbolically plucked from graveyards, and other scary pursuits. Waiting in the church porch at midnight, first recorded in 1608, offered a glimpse of the ghosts of all who must die in the coming year. The month ends with May Day Eve - traditionally known as Mischief Night when young people believed they had the traditional right to play tricks. It’s known in some Germanic countries as - the greatest night of the year for witches to ride and meet. Shakespeare set his play “Midsummer Night’s Dream” on May Eve though no strong tradition of links with the supernatural world on this day remains in English culture.
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Look! a lovely idea -------------------
Wildflower Seed Balls
Making wildflower seedballs: easy, fun and brilliant for wildlife! Find out more over on the Cupsmith’s website…. A great project for kids this Easter holiday too!
Tutorial available from Cupsmith’s : Wildflower Seed Balls 7
A (very) Little Look at Embroidery Scissors
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A Stitcher’s Alphabet
Part Three : E, F & G
Elizabeth Tudor Elizabeth I of England (1533-1603) is remembered mostly for her successful political and economic policies, however she was also a notable embroideress and during her reign some of the finest embroideries ever worked in England were produced. This was partly due to the introduction of the new, fine steel needles, but also to the spirit of the Renaissance, love of finery and the richly decorated clothing favoured by the court and nobility as well as the emergence of pattern books for the home stitcher and the rise in prosperity of the trading - future middle - classes. Though a skilled embroiderer Elizabeth was not as productive as her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots (probably too busy ruling her kingdom!) but some fine pieces worked by her as a young girl including book bindings for her own manuscript of the and the of Queen Katharine Parr (the last wife of Henry VIII who outlived him. 10
Embroiderers by Trade and Profession As a professional class, embroiderers were not always highly considered, as this entry in of 1847 makes clear: “Embroiderers may be reckoned among the Dependents of the Lace Man; as in his shop the greatest part of their rich Work is vended, and he furnishes them with all Materials for their business. It is chiefly performed by Women; is an ingenious Art, requires a nice Taste in drawing, a bold Fancy to invent new patterns, and a clean Hand to save their Work from Tarnishing. Few of the Workers at present can Draw, they have their Patterns from the Pattern-Drawer who must likewise draw the Work itself, which they only fill up, with Gold and Silver, Silks or Worsteds, according to use and Nature. We are far from excelling in this Branch of Business in England; the Nuns in Foreign Countries far exceed anything we can perform. We make some Good Work but fall short of the bold Fancy in French and Italian Embroidery.”
Detail from “Girl Embroidering “ by G F Kersting, c1814
Etching Embroidery When the art of printwork - literally copying black and white prints with needle and thread - was revived in the late nineteenth century it was known as etching embroidery. Etching embroidery used mostly landscape subjects, but with the grounds often filled with tiny French knots to imitate the stippling in engraving. There was a second revival of this type of embroidery in the 1930s when rather different subjects, which might be called “a tourist’s England” were used. These were usually buildings such as cathedrals, William Shakespeare’s birthplace, or the Tower of London and a kit was sold with the subject traced on the linen (the image on the right of Westminster Abbey is from such a kit), together with a skein of black thread with which to follow the lines of the stitching. This was an early example of the embroidery kit.
What a come down after the beauties of Elizabethan embroidery a little less than three hundred years earlier!
Eggs-tra Ordinary Eggs ointment, or kept under limewater or waterglass. Special galvanised buckets with lids were available for this purpose, with a removable wire basket inside to hold the eggs. Another method of preservation was simply to rub butter all over the shells, or submerge them in a mixture of salt, water, slaked lime and cream of tartar. Eggshells are naturally porous and all these processes aimed to block that porosity, preventing bacteria from entering the egg and spoiling the contents.
All around there are signs of a fresh year getting under way as the first flowers of spring are blooming in the hedgerows and the fickle English weather warms us with sunshine one moment and throws showers of freezing rain at us the next! This is a good time to organise your shelves and store cupboards which will soon begin to fill up again once spring shades into early summer and the hedgerows, fields and your garden begin to produce their annual harvest. Eggs have always been a token of spring and the purity of their shape never fails to please. Piled into a bowl or basket in your kitchen they suggest the pleasures to come - of cakes, sauces, meringues (of course!) and lovely fruit curds.They are the first foods of the new season to become available and our chickens, ducks and geese begin to lay in earnest. To this day they remain a symbol of the season and of re-birth (especially at Easter time) and though we now buy our eggs from the supermarket all year round, people who keep chickens still have a spring glut of fresh, delicious eggs to deal with.
Nowadays we still don’t have a means of keeping eggs perfectly fresh, and even the freezer doesn’t really help though you can separate the yolks from the white and freeze them for later cake making. Whole beaten eggs can also be frozen, but again are only good for cakes and omelettes - and never quite as nice as using fresh ones. It’s far better to use a glut of eggs in a quite different way by making special, possibly slightly luxurious things that will keep for at least some time and are always welcome additions. Lemon and other fruit curds are a good example as the abundance of eggs coincides perfectly with lemons in season. Other ideas might include cakes or biscuits such as macaroons and meringues. Yum!
At one time hens laid eggs mainly during the spring months, with geese and ducks laying only at that time, so many methods of preservation were devised to keep the spring glut available for the barren months of the year. Eggs were individually painted with grease or zinc 12
“To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.” “Mr Edwards: I am a draper mad with love. I love you more than all the flannelette and calico, candlewick, dimity, crash and merino, tussore, cretonne, crepon, muslin, poplin, ticking and twill in the whole Cloth Hall of the world. I have come to take you away to my Emporium on the hill, where the change hums on wires. Throw away your little bedsocks and your Welsh wool knitted jacket, I will warm the sheets like an electric toaster, I will lie by your side like the Sunday roast.” “Mary Ann Sailors, away from the cool scrubbed cobbled kitchen with the Sunday-school pictures on the whitewashed wall and the farmers' almanac hung above the settle and the sides of bacon on the ceiling hooks, and goes down the cockleshelled paths of that applepie kitchen garden, ducking under the gippo's clothespegs, catching her apron on the blackcurrant bushes, past beanrows and onion-bed and tomatoes ripening on the wall towards the old man playing the harmonium in the orchard, and sits down on the grass at his side and shells the green peas that grow up through the lap of her frock that brushes the dew.”
A (very) Little Look at Plain & Evenweave Linen Linen is one of the most popular fabrics for hand embroidery - but it comes in many different guises. In this issue I thought it might be interesting to compare even weave and plain weave linen…
it won't have the same number of threads per inch in each direction. In fact, it will not normally have a specified thread count. It's just linen - normal everyday linen found in fabric and haberdashery stores across the land. The sort of linen that's good for embroidery will normally have a fairly high thread count as it needs to be firmly woven to support the stitching, but the count really doesn't matter with a plain weave fabric.
Even-weave linen is, as its name suggests, a fabric with a very even weave - with both the warp and weft threads numbering approximately the same in either direction in an extremely regular grid. It's widely used in counted techniques, such as counted cross stitch, black work, drawn and pulled thread work and so on.
Plain weave linen will often be sold by its weight - and various weights may be give different descriptions, such as sheer - a light linen or canvas - much thicker and heavier. When comparing the two you may also notice that the holes at the corners where the warp and weft threads cross are not as distinct. It will usually be a smooth fabric (albeit with the imperfections characteristic of linen).
If you're purchasing even weave linen then you'll discover that it comes in various thread "counts". These simply tell you the number of threads per inch in either direction, for example an 18 count linen will have 18 threads in one inch of the fabric along both the warp and weft. This may be referred to as a low count even weave and the threads will be very easy to see as they will be quite thick. High count even weave may be as high as 36 or 40 count which would produce very fine work indeed if the counted stitches were worked over just a single thread of fabric.
For freestyle surface embroidery, a plain weave linen is a great choice for your background fabric, but you can also use even weave linen. If you're going down this route, then a higher count even weave is normally the best choice to give you that nice firm base on which to place your stitches.
The warp and weft threads in your even weave linen will not always be exactly the same size, but the better quality your linen, the closer the warp and weft threads will be to each other in thickness. Occasionally you may see an irregularly sized thread compared to those around it, maybe thicker or thinner, but this is a characteristic of linen and for me, at least, one of its charms.
In surface embroidery we love to stitch curves and other flowing shapes and, especially if you're stitching on an even weave linen, it's important to use a crewel or embroidery needle. This has a sharp tip and will pierce the fabric threads rather than slip between them - which would confine them to the grid of the even weave and prevent you achieving that smooth line and clear shape.
In contrast, as you may already have guessed, plain weave linen does not have an even weave - that is to say 14
Now that spring is here….
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April - we’ve passed the equinox, summer time has begun and there’s no putting spring back in the box now!. Winter is behind us, though there will be undoubtedly be cold days to come and the danger of frost hasn’t quite passed yet - gardeners beware - but the world has woken and summer is only just around the corner now. April, with its sunshine, showers and rainbows, sees the blooming of many wild flowers. Wild violets and wood-sorrel grow along the hedgerows and various speedwells show blue across the arable fields, while the horse chestnuts at the front of our garden are in full magnificent flower, smothered in tall creamy-white “candles” that seem to attract the bees from miles around. In the kitchen my thoughts turn away from the heavy, warming soups, stews and casseroles that have been our order of fare over the winter months, towards fresher, lighter dishes. I will have to wait a while yet for the produce from my vegetable garden - the garlic is nearly ready, but you can’t make a whole meal from garlic after all! The cold frame is packed with baby plants I’m raising
from seed - beans of various kinds, sweet corn (hopefully I won’t lose my lovely ripe cobs to the badgers this year!), peas and sunflowers among others. My hen project has been delayed for another year, so I will be eagerly looking out for roadside signs advertising “free-range eggs” displayed on often slightly wonky looking homemade tables offering fresh eggs from the householders’ chickens. And then of course there’s Easter - falling in the middle of April this year. We will of course be hosting our traditional Easter Egg hunt - our slightly untidy garden with stacks of logs, and piles of vintage bricks and other such items awaiting the Engineer’s attention is packed with hiding places. I shall never forget though the year that I went up the garden hiding eggs, only to turn around and discover Ben had been following me up the garden finding them again! This year, as in every subsequent year, the dogs will be confined indoors until every last egg has been found by our excited grandchildren!
Eggs Benedict Ingredients For the sauce: ● 3 tbsp white wine vinegar ● 75g/3oz butter, melted ● 2 large British Lion egg yolks ● salt and freshly ground black pepper To complete: ● 2 large British Lion eggs ● 2 slices ham ● toasted muffins to serve ● Chopped chives to garnish
Method ● For the sauce: place the vinegar in a small pan and simmer until reduced by half. Place the egg yolks and vinegar in a small heatproof bowl and set it over a pan of gently simmering water. Whisk the yolks until the mixture is thick enough to leave a ribbon trail when the whisk is lifted. Gradually whisk in the butter until the mixture has thickened. Season to taste. Remove the bowl from the heat and set aside. ● To complete, pour 5cm/2in water in a large frying pan and bring to a gentle simmer. Carefully crack the eggs into the water and simmer for 2-3 mins or until the eggs are poached to your liking. ● Place 2 pieces of toasted muffins on each plate, top with the slices of ham, then place a poached egg on top. Spoon a little of the sauce over each, sprinkle over a few chopped chives and serve. Eggs Benedict is a classic breakfast dish, and perfect for Easter morning.
One a penny … two a penny Hot Cross Buns!
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The Countryside in April April, with its sunshine, showers and rainbows, calls forth many wild flowers. Wild violets and primroses grow under hedge and tree whilst purple vetches make a skein of colour in neglected places and speedwells show blue on the cornfields. In quiet meadows cowslips hang their deep yellow heads. Horse chestnuts, hornbeams, ash, beech, oak, wild cherries, alder, birch and willows are in flower. In hedgerows the blackthorn stands arrayed in white which contrasts vividly with the black bark. These tree blossoms before its leaves are out. In the valleys many yellow-banded bumble bees hover round the deadnettles. And in the ditches, toads still place their necklaces of eggs. Perhaps some venturesome bat, on the wing during a brief daylight flight may fall victim to a sparrow-hawk. Squirrels now build their dreys and young moles and shrews are born. Frog tadpoles are to be seen in ponds and the common lizard basks on some sunny bank. One may often glimpse a hedgehog in some quiet lane at twilight, whilst numerous moths are on the wing. Many migratory birds arrive this month, perhaps the most well known being swallows who colonise banks, meadows, waterways and our own homes of course, and the cuckoo with its distinctive call. Now is the time for nest-building and beginning to raise the next generation. Weather wisdom tells us that “A cold April brings bread and wine,” and “When the elm leaf is like a mouse’s ear, then to sow barley never fear.”
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