Monogrammed and Embroidered

I love peering inside shop windows and on any walking trip through a town or city can be found photographing shop fronts and window displays. I rarely venture inside, focused instead on the lettering on the window or the way the collection of objects are arranged.

Lucullus in New Orleans would be the exception. One evening, walking back to the hotel from Sylvain where we had eaten a beautiful Bolognese I stopped to study the window under the striped awning, drawn by the table in the window and the beautiful lighting. Lucullus is an antiques store in New Orleans specializing in all things related to eating and drinking. The next morning, we were outside waiting for the doors to open. On my first visit I purchased a book by Patrick Dunne, the owner of Lucullus. It’s an exquisite study of culinary antiques filled with fascinating photos and facts. For example, did you know tablecloths existed before napkins and people often used the edge of the tablecloth to wipe their mouths. After this, people shared one long napkin across many places. Thank goodness napkins, or lapklns as the large square ones were called came into being.

When New Orleans was a few hours drive and a picnic away we used to visit several times a year. We liked to photograph the city, jog beside the Mississippi, and dine on oysters and beignets in the French Quarter (not in the same meal!). On our second, third, and fourth visit to Lucullus we went straight to the armoires in the rear where the vintage monogrammed napkins are kept. The helpful person in the shop thought we would want to find our own initials. I was more interested in the embroidery, the style of the monogram, and the feel of the fabric.

 I adored the feel and look of the large damask napkins. I adored them so much I feared using them and simply stacked them on a chair or in an armoire.

When we moved here to the Texas Hill Country, I decided there wasn’t much use in having a linen treasure you never handled or used. I took some of the smaller hand towels I had purchased in Galveston and put them in a tray in the bathroom where guests could use them. These towels were about the size of our modern hand towels or a bit larger. I learned they were actually used as bath towels. I would not be able to wrap up in one of these after a bath! The terry cloth fabric we have in our towels today wasn’t made until the late 1890’s. These towels in the tray have proven to be pretty popular with guests. One of our family members was thrilled to find we had a few towels with the initials of the school she attended when she was a little girl. She was so excited she brought one to the table at our back-to-school brunch. Afterwards we decided we would launder them and wrap them up as a surprise gift for her the next time we see her.

I have used them as placemats under woven straw mats, but with the placemat and plate on top of the monogram you miss part of the thrill.

I decided to choose a few of them and make them into pillow covers for decorative pillows on our bed. I didn’t want to cut the napkins, so I have used pillows which conform to the original size of the napkin. I backed each napkin with a piece of light weight cotton fabric and cut the back of the pillow from white cotton duck fabric; the same fabric I used to make the duvet cover for the bed. I machine stitched French seams on the inside of the pillow. To do this you sew the fabric with the wrong sides together, cut the excess fabric outside the stitching, turn the fabric to the right sides together and sew again, thus creating an enclosed seam. I top stitched about ¼” from the finished edge, inserted the pillow, and closed with top stitching along the bottom, again, ¼” from the finished seam.  I like the tailored, crisp look of this in contrast with the vintage pillow face.

During the pandemic we purchased a sewing machine with embroidering capability. I was still using the Kenmore my parents had given to me as a wedding gift and my husband thought it would be a good idea to have a machine with different strengths. We had a ball ordering embroidery thread online and learning how to use the attachment. Within a week or two of embroidering the evenings away we had monogrammed all our napkins and some of my nightgowns!

Rebecca Vizard’s beautiful book, Once Upon a Pillow, is inspiring. I find something new every time I look at it. Her story of developing her passion into a successful enterprise is a great read. She searches the world for antique fabric and embroideries, preserving them and placing them on new velvets and linens to make pillows renown in the world of interior design.

I am experimenting with painter’s drop cloths as a fabric for clothes and pillows. It looks somewhat like rough linen. I traced one of the antique embroideries pictured in the book and transferred it to a piece of the fabric. I ordered a large embroidery hoop and some silver and gold embroidery thread and began stitching. It is a bit off and the stitching is pretty rough in places, but I am enjoying the process of learning. I was working on it one day while waiting in a lobby and found this to be a great way to meet people. Most who stopped by to visit noted they hadn’t seen anyone sewing in years, used to sew, wanted to take up sewing, or had a closet full of fabric and embroidery thread and would pull it out and get started now. I enjoyed meeting and talking with them and wondering if this is akin the feeling people used to have when they made quilts together.

I decided I needed to know more about embroidery than I remembered from working on my blue jeans and undershirts in the 70’s! I have found these books to be enormously helpful and look forward to continuing to learn.

My current embroidery project is to make two bed pillows for the guest room using the drop cloth “linen”. I checked to see the fabric was squared using a ruler to ensure the distance from one corner to the opposing corner was the same in both directions. I wanted the initials to be somewhat similar to the monogramming on the vintage napkins, so I used a fairly small stencil guide. I used a fine point pen to trace the outline of the letters. Finally, I sewed the edges on the machine to keep the fabric from unraveling as I work on it.

This will be a fun project for these cold winter nights before the fire.

As I close this post, I’ll share one more “window shopping” photo with you. Keep looking for inspiration!