The Elegant Emery

I’ve had this pattern, called Elegant Emery, for a very long time.  I think I acquired it when I was in the Indianapolis EGA chapter, but I can’t remember for sure. I bought the burgundy velour and the emery for the project and put them in a bag with the instructions, but that’s as far as I got with it. It was designed by Ellen F. Coyne with a Wisconsin address.

I pulled it out this week thinking it might be a stitching project that Okuda San and I could work on together. It’s small and only has three stitches – eyelet, four sided stitch, and buttonhole (not the blanket stitch, even though it is side by side stitches over four threads, just like More Options). I started it one evening and finished the next morning. The buttonhole stitch is done on an angle, changing direction, so I don’t think it is a beginner project.  It’d probably be best to learn the buttonhole or blanket stitch straight across first.   In addition, it’s a project that requires precision and it’s not easy to take out the pulled eyelet and four sided stitches if you make a counting mistake. The instructions called for tea dyed linen and ecru perle cotton #8 and #12. I had darker fabric, so I substituted DMC 640 in the two sizes of perle cotton because it matched and that was what I had.

Before cutting away the outside

The instructions were not clear in several places, but maybe the designer gave additional instructions if it was taught as a class. The instructions also said things like, stitch the ribbon to the emery.  Emery is like sand.  How can you stitch a ribbon to it?  I made a little muslin pouch to hold the emery, stitch the ribbon to, and put inside the velour.

The ribbon slid inside the center eyelet.

The corners were tacked to the velour and the little tassels stitched to the edges between the corners. I’m pleased with how it turned out and it was very quick to stitch up.  A stitcher can’t have too many little toolie things.