Vintage embroidery inspiration

Despite being slightly jaded (hung over) I am all fired up and excited about what I have to show you today.  You may remember a while back I mentioned that my lovely granny had given me a load of her crafty bits that she can no longer use due to her arthritis (poor granny).  Some of these bits were used to make my spotty cushion for my sitting room, but a big stash of something tremendously exciting has been waiting in the lovely folder in the photo above (hand embroidered by my gran, of course...) for the perfect moment for me to photograph for you.  That moment presented itself today when Mr N and the boys were at the swimming pool and baby n was asleep.  So would you like to see what's getting my creative juices flowing?

An amazing collection of vintage embroidery transfers.  Most of these date from the 1930s, with a few from around 1940.  They are so beautiful and I can't believe they're all still pristine and largely unused.  Hooray for granny and her hoarder tendencies!

This little book is dated 1933.

I particularly love this one, which not only has the original transfer (from a magazine, like most of the others) but also a colour picture of how it is supposed to look when it is completed:

I could go on like this for hours, but I'll restrain myself.  Suffice to say, I am raring to get sewing - I find hand sewing so calming and therapeutic and I am so inspired by this lovely lot.  I have so many ideas for what to make with these: squares of white linen with small, single-colour pictures hung as bunting in my sitting room; plain white hankies with little pictures in one corner to give to my female relatives as Christmas presents (if you are, indeed, female and happen to be related to me, please ignore what I've just written there...); lovely embroidered cushions... hmmmm....the possibilities are endless.

And on a completely other note, I wanted to update you on a couple of rather pressing matters: I can confirm that my mattress topper is, quite possibly, the most exciting thing to happen to my bed for a long time (snort); and the tweed cowl...hmmmm...the pattern said it uses two skeins of yarn, but either I am doing something completely wrong, or this is a mistake.  Anyway, I am rejigging it to make something similar with my two skeins and I'll update you when I've managed to create something wearable (it is a very lovely yarn though, that's for sure).

Hope you all had a jolly weekend, wherever you are in the world. x

PS - Just to say 'hello' to my new followers and all you lovely gals who leave me comments - I really, honestly love reading what you have to say and I am so grateful that you stop by to read my ramblings.  I often read your blogs on my phone, which won't let me leave comments, and I just wanted to say that if I am a bit rubbish about commenting it's not because I don't visit, it's because I spend my life running round like a headless chicken and have a memory like a sieve! x