A curious embroided French bouquet

After the purchase of the linen sheets (see previous post) there was time for more searching in the cabinets and drawers at the Retro department of Emmaüs.

I found a beautiful piece of linen embroided with two bouquets of summer-flowers. I didn't had a close look at it, but it looked so fresh and bright. It was almost for nothing (about € 2,-), so it ended up at the pile to be taken home before leaving this 'Alladin's Cave of Textile Treasures".

And this is the piece.

It is a rectangle of white linen cloth and on both sides are bouquets of flowers embroided in different kind of stitches.  Red poppies, blue cornflowers, white daisies, ears of corn, green leaves. At least that is what you see at first.

But after a closer look (and a very clever look of my husband Jos) suddely you see that he piece isn’t finished. And that both bouquets are very different. White daisies on one side and strange yellow ones on the other side. The poppies aren’t finished and so aren’t the cornflowers. It must have been started and not finished by a woman who loved to embroider because the it looks as it is done by an very experienced lady. 

A question came up immediately: what could be the reason that it isn’t finished? Maybshe didn’t liked the piece at the end and left it in a cabinet at her home. Sometimes an idea can be very disappointing when you work on it. Perhaps there wasn’t enough yarn so the decision was made to embroider the daisies in another colour and at the end it wasn’t the way it should look in her opinion. 

Or maybe she gave it to someone else to be fhished and she used the other colours of the yarn but at the end she didn’t like it either.

Strangely It is finished with a crocheted border and over that a band of lace was sewn. Why? Probably they didn’t like the look of the crochet and thought that lace looked more beautiful. 

I also love the back of this piece where you see little knots and stitches. 

It is all done with great care and with attention to detail and that is why it is so strange that the piece isn’t finished. We will never know the reason but I am very happy that it wasn’t thrown away at the end and that I could buy it.

After taking pictures of it we decided to send it to dear friends Anja and Paul who have a little cabin on a tiny island at the eastcoast of Sweden. We were sure that they would love it. French flowers on a Swedish table was the idea. 

It took about ten days before they got it and yes, they loved it and did send pictures of the way they use it. What was lovely was that they took away the silly lace band and now the crocheted edge is visible which makes it a much better piece.

This summer we will enjoy that piece of embroidery again. Our holiday will be partly spend on that beautiful island. Paul and myself wil celebrate our 60th birthday there at the 7th of August and the piece will probably decorating our birthdaytable.