Eight Christmas Presents from a Yard of Canvas
Source: Winter Sweet, Being the Extra Christmas Part of the Girl's Own Paper, 1898
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Fig. I
At Christmas-time, when most of us have several gifts to bestow, it is, for various reasons, an excellent plan to cut as many of these as possible out of one piece of material.
The styles of working and of making up the articles thus planned can be greatly varied, so that even if two presents from the same fabric be made to members of one household, no charge of sameness need be incurred.
Canvas is not the easiest of materials to use economically, and for that very reason has been chosen, that from the examples before us the even greater possibilities of some softer fabric may be seen.
To begin with, the canvas was the cream-coloured single-thread variety once largely used for "ivory" work. As the width of it is (in the sample here shown) a yard and a quarter, it follows that the entire piece measured 45 by 36 inches.
 The way in which this was cut up is plainly seen in the diagram, Fig. I. First, the 21-inch square in the left-hand top corner was worked for a cushion-cover, in a manner popular abroad, but all too little known here. It is seen, completed, at Fig. 2. The working threads were tapestry wools; five shades of red, four of yellow, and four of green were selected, such as would be gay but by no means crude when seen together. The stitches are all in sets of four, and each of them is taken over four strands of the canvas, thus forming a whole series of little squares or blocks with which a pattern is developed.
Many cross-stitch and canvas patterns can be adapted to this work, and experience will soon show how to rearrange and originate designs. It should be noted that the canvas is often allowed to show between the squares of stitches.
 The next article to the right in the diagram develops finally into the magazine rack shown in Fig. 3. It is 21 inches deep by 10 inches across at the widest part, the unsloped sides measure 12 inches in depth. After some thought this case was made up in the following way. On the two sloped ends large stars were worked in long straight stitches of yellowish-green silk. A piece of heliotrope-quilted satin, the size and shape of the canvas section, was next sewn to it as a lining, and the whole was edged with fine heliotrope cord looped at the corners. Next the rack was folded into the shape seen in the illustration, the bottom corner being lightly tacked to keep it down, and "hinges" of cord were added above to allow the pocket portion to droop slightly and yet to keep it from falling too far forward. Lastly, loose bows of yellow-green ribbon, assorting with the embroidery, were tied on at every angle.
 The fourth picture (Fig. 4) is of a shopping- or work-bag, such as German embroideresses love to manufacture. The length of 21 inches is folded in half to make a bag of half that depth and 14 inches wide along the mouth; at the bottom triangles are cut off the size of those left from the top and bottom of the bag about 6 inches across.
The shopping-bag should have traced upon it a flowing, informal pattern, which is to be outlined with bright crimson tapestry wool and closely filled in with cross and straight stitches in various shades of pink wool. The background in and out the pattern is in stripes of shaded yellow diamonds, worked by carrying the wool over two, four, six, eight and ten canvas strands, and then over the same numbers in the reverse order. When the embroidery is completed, the bag should be lined with linen and edged with cream and yellow coloured ball fringe. It must also have a handle on each side made from strips of canvas 13 inches long by 3 inches wide. These handles are the pieces marked A and A on the diagram, and should be embroidered down the centre with a row of yellow diamonds, then stiffened with buckram and stitched into place. The whole bag, or the mouth only of it, can also be stiffened if wished.
 Taking now the lower part of Fig. I, we see, in the left-hand corner, provision for a strip of canvas 15 inches long by 4 inches wide. Along the crimson ribbon an inch wide was secured in vandykes by working feather-stitch in green crewel silk along the selvedges. The strip was next stiffened by stretching it over a ring of card-board or buckram, and a lining of crimson printed velvet was stitched in. This made a useful ring for carrying music, papers or magazines, and it received, as finishing touches, a binding of green and crimson chenille and woollen binding, and carrying loops of stout green silk cord. It then appeared as in Fig. 5.
 The glove sachet (Fig. 6) took much longer to make. In addition to the piece of canvas measuring 15 inches by 12 inches (to be folded along the dotted line), were needed similar sections of wadding and of white surah, or other silk, for a lining. The canvas itself was to be stretched in a frame and the design seen upon it was cut from pink satin and warm red velvet (for the centres) and laid exactly evenly in position. After being tacked in place, carefully, to avoid marking the velvet, the entire pattern was outlined with fine pink cord. Then the tacking threads were removed and the canvas freed from the frame, laid on the linings and edged round with some of the pink cord, looped at the corners. Four ends of pink ribbon, two on each leaf of the sachet, were added to form bows for closing it.
 The crewel-case (Fig. 7) needs careful cutting. It is better to begin by taking from the canvas a strip the maximum length (29 inches) and width (15 inches) required. At the pocket end cut away the two strips, 13 by 3 inches wide, which are, as said before, to serve as handles to the bag at Fig. 4. Leave the canvas for its whole width for 6 inches, which are to form the flaps, then cut down to the centre for 3 inches, straight along towards the point for one inch, then diagonally across to the extreme tip of the point. Leave the case thus cut out and prepare a sateen lining, similar in all ways but everywhere an inch larger. Take a second piece of sateen, 9 inches long by 7 deep, hem it narrowly all round, and fix it in the centre of the sateen lining, so that it reaches to within an inch of the sloping of the tip at one end and of the pocket limit at the other.
Lay the lining on the canvas, tacking it carefully. Work the word "Wools" and a large bow in stitches of wee shaded ribbon on the canvas tip, and along the centre of the case stitch lines with flax thread an inch apart and carried through both sections of sateen so as to form, in the smaller piece, runners for the skeins which they are afterwards to contain. There can be nine lines of backstitch, and they must be absolutely accurate; each stitch over three strands of canvas and with sixteen strands between each row of stitchery. Next turn the edges of sateen over to the canvas and hem down to make a coloured bind, fitting in scraps at the corners where necessary. Turn up 6 inches for the pocket and stitch this firmly, sew on a button in the centre of one of the lines of stitching and make a buttonhole loop at the tip of the point, then fold up and close the case which is finished. Dull pink was the colour chosen here for lining and stitchery.
There are now the triangular pieces marked B to be used up for the seventh gift. Work on each a large star in straight stitches, line and bind with coloured sateen, and stitch them, overlapping, round the edge of a square lath basket.
To make the eighth and last present from the two pieces left from the crewel- or wool-case (C in Fig. I) it was decided to embroider them in cross-stitch. They then could be put at the bottom of a straightly-made, oblong reticule of blue satin sheeting, the widest parts left from the tip of the crewel-case being put level with the bottom of the bag. The width of this latter was, of course, 15 inches. The canvas, when in place, needed securing with wide lace-braid sewn over all the cut edges, and gave an admirable and uncommon appearance to the reticule.
This used up the last section of the yard of canvas, not one inch of which had been wasted.
Leirion Clifford
See Miss Mary's Little Ones
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