The mail often brings something interesting and recently, I was sent an antique huck towel that is embroidered in a most charming way. I have never seen one with such elaborate, crocheted edges, and pink roses within each scallop on the bottom side. In addition, there is a lovely yellow basket that is embroidered and holds additional flowers. This towel was made by Katherine Van Wettering, who was always called “Kitty.” She was born in 1912, and grew up in Jersey City, NJ. She died about thirty years ago, according to Carol Grace, her daughter. Carol believes that this work may have been done in the 1930s or 1940s. She was concerned about the yellowing on it.

At first inspection, my guess was that the yellow was a stain caused from being exposed to an untreated wood surface in a drawer, probably for many years. As you can see, the stain is not “all over” or even. Here is what the piece looks like, after I soaked it in All Free & Clear for a day and a half. It is a delicate-looking towel, and was beautiful, I am sure, when it was first rendered.

I did not dare soak it for much longer that I did, as I did not want to weaken the fibers. All Free & Clear is a product that is desirable because it contains both anionic and non-ionic surfactants, as does Ivory liquid soap, which would have been my other choice for a cleaner, mixed with a little bit of dissolved Orvus paste. A lot of the stain leached out and turned the water a bit yellow. I used a Color Catcher to absorb any excess color in the water. The white got grimey and picked up some yellow colorant, but the yellow embroidery stitches remained a constant color, before and after washing (very light). I want to thank Carol for the chance to see this item and try to improve it a bit.

The use of huck towels was very popular in earlier times. Some of them were embroidered in the manner of Swedish huck towels. A friend of mine who passed away at the age of 90, had given me a pile of huck towels that had belonged to her father-in-law’s medical practice. In those days, paper towels were not in general use. She thought I might want to practice Swedish huckweaving. The closest I have come to that is to make a Swedish huckweaving design on monk’s cloth to create an afghan.

Where would we be without our needlework friends to share our passion and encourage each other?

Best wishes and have fun this weekend!

Patricia Cummings

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 18th, 2009 at 1:04 am and is filed under , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.