The Sharp Needle

Candlewicking

For this month’s Sharp Needle column we move across the Atlantic Ocean to the American colonies to investigate the whitework embroidery of candlewicking.

Herstory

During the late 1600’s, women in England often embroidered beautiful white bedspreads with designs of vines, flowers, and baskets of fruit using high quality, finely woven grounds and embellished them with threads of silk, cotton or fine wool. The traditional stitches on these spreads were French knots and couched cords. As English colonists settled in America in the 1700’s, they brought these embroidery traditions with them. However, since embroidery materials in America were limited and the tariffs from the Old World were high, the colonists began using lesser quality cotton and linen fabrics. Some sources maintain that embroiderers used empty flour bags that had been bleached in the sun and used the cotton from candle wicks to embellish the grounds, hence the name candlewicking. Only a few stitches were used, and the designs were kept very simple. Interestingly enough, candlewicking also became popular in Australia as English settlers moved to Australia and met with the same dearth of fine materials on which to embroider.

Jan Potter, in her book Candlewicking, states that candlewicking was born in the Wild West as women traveled west in wagon trains to settle the prairies and high plains and longed for some comfort and adornment in the harsh, lonely places where they found themselves. Having few of the comforts of home and rarely able to visit shops, these women developed a way of creating useful and decorative articles for the home using the canvas-like cream fabric used for the roofs of the wagons and wicks of candles as threads - also made of cotton and much the same color. Who knows the true story?

Candlewicking Technique

There are two forms of candlewicking: woven and embroidered. The woven style is considered unique to America. In early times, corded threads were laid over sticks and then held in place with thinner threads. When the stick was removed, loops were evident on the surface. Embroidered candlewicking is what we are most accustomed to seeing today where there is a great use of French and Colonial knots. Other stitches that are popular in embroidered candlewicking are the satin stitch, bullion knot, split stitch, cable stitch and stem stitch. Sometimes the embroidered pieces are worked with tufting stitches that create a chenille look.

Today, traditional candlewicking is still white-on-white or cream-on-cream. The ground is a fine muslin and the embroidery thread may be a thicker pearl cotton, cordonnet, or specialty cotton thread available at Lacis (Berkeley, CA), among other places. More modern candlewicking pieces may be color-on-color or may be many decorative colored threads on a white ground to create a more realistic ‘picture’ work. Motifs are still predominantly leaves, flowers and baskets. While some may dismiss candlewicking as an unsophisticated form of embroidery, the simplicity of candlewicking on a fine ground with beautiful pearl cotton or silk threads can create a very elegant project. And since this is The Sharp Needle, it is of course stitched with a sharp needle.

Resources

Traditional Candlewicking by Sandie Meldrum

Wildflowers in Candlewicking by Jan Potter

http://crossstitch.about.com/library/weekly/aa073000a.htm

http://crossstitch.about.com/library/freepatterns/candlewicking/blcw_acornleaf_double.htm (free pattern)

http://www.white-works.com/candlewicking.htm

http://www.needlearts.com/howes_needlework/ (picture of pillow seen above)