PieceWork March/April 2013

Until the invention by Johannes Gutenberg of automated movable type in A.D. 1452, the number of people worldwide who could read remained very small, the vast majority of them wealthy members of society or clergy. To communicate with nonreaders, pictures were used. These might be painted on canvas (the word “picture” comes from the Latin word pictus (“painted”), or, as you’ll see in this March/April 2013 issue of PieceWork, executed in needlework. From among the countless possibilities, we’ve selected examples from seventeenth-century elaborate raised embroidery, motifs on a christening robe, some of the charted images used in filet, and the ubiquitous knitted eight-pointed star/flower/snowflake motif. Projects include a sweet knitted cardigan for baby, a stumpwork dragon, and the knitted pincushion that received the grand-prize in PieceWork’s 2012 Pincushion Contest.