1907 #14 Laundry Bag – Sac a Linge This is an extremely useful accessory in a house well looked after, since by giving the habit of order to Bleuette, we acquire it ourselves, we benefit to undertake this pleasant and easy work. If you want to make one for your mother, you only have to increase the proportions. One can also use this model for a sac de bebe [diaper bag]. One thus calls these kinds of reticules which are carried by the mothers and the nannies when one will walk a small child, and in which one puts the spare diapers and the baby’s bottle. Whatever, of the rest, the size and the purpose of the bag, its embroidery is always the same one. It is made entirely in cross stitch. Our drawing shows you the way to embroider the broad outlines of cross stitch which form the squares in the middle of which are the stars. By examining the movement of the needle, you will completely understand this explanation. [Editor: The stars are made in point du diable. This stitch is made with an ordinary cross stitch, with a second cross stitch made on top of the first.] It is only when the embroidery is finished that you sew the fabric in the shape of a bag. This one can be made from a single piece, if you have available sufficient fabric. It will have, in this case, only two seams – either on the two sides, or on one of its sides and at the bottom – that depends on the way in which you will have folded the fabric. In any case, make the seams on the wrong side, in backstitch, quite securely, but without pulling on the thread. You will overcast afterwards each edge of the seam; this will be more tidy first, then more solid with washing. In embroidering the fabric, you will leave free, at the top, five or six centimeters for the return of the hem. It is pointless to embroider this part returning. At the place indicated, you will sew small rings of bone or metal in which the ribbon or the lace being used as a slide will pass. For Bleuette, it is understood that you will take the fabric that one will give you. But, if you make either a large laundry bag, or a bag for a child, it will be necessary to choose a fabric easy to wash and to embroider it in schreinerized [lustrous]cotton, in rope quite colorfast or in washable silk. The gray coarse linen with which one makes the covering bags, the linen for napkins a little thin, the soup strainer cheesecloth fabric more or less coarse – are perfect for this type of work. One makes also many of these bags for washing in flowered cretonne. In this case, all the work consists in the sewing. You can still make this bag in gray linen with the application of flowers or foliage cut from old cretonne, and maintained on the background by a spaced buttonhole stitch or a couching. One can even carry out these leaves or these flowers with chainstitch in the style of the Grenarvay embroidery, with cotton or with washable silk. Lastly the more

advanced in embroidery will be able to try satin stitch or padded satin stitch. A pretty kind of bag for washing is that which one makes in net with colored string. One lines this with a white percaline which one removes easily to wash it. If one wanted a transparency of color to work in net, one will make first a bag out of percale in the chosen color or in Turkey red cotton, then one will place the bag of white fabric which will be alone in contact with the dirty linen and which one will wash each week. [Editor: Percaline is a fine cotton fabric usually glazed, used especially for linings.] Translation copyright 2011 Deirdre Gawne. Not for sale. www.dressingbleuette.com