Dinner Napkin for Children, March 1880I am amazed at the hundreds of needlework projects which appea

Dinner Napkin for Children, March 1880I am amazed at the hundreds of needlework projects which appear in tiny print in this bound volume of Peterson’s Magazine. I marvel at the simplicity of the directions, the enormous amount of work and effort needed, and in some cases. of the sheer impracticality of it all. Take this “Dinner Napkin for Children” which we would call a bib. It starts with plain white cloth, then you use “cross stitch and Holbein stitch” the latter being a running stitch that is then doubled in order to give an unbroken line near the outer hems. Then the entire outer edge is finished with buttonhole stitch, then a round of double crochet stitch, then a round of shell stitch in crochet. All this so a young child can dribble food on the results! My mind boggles at this effort. And protests. You can understand why “Simplicity” became the cry of the next generation of dress reformers and then became the watchword of the Dress Doctors. And why children’s bibs became far less elaborate later on. -- source link

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