special linen

I had a lovely trip to The Crewel Gobelin yesterday. I took my Portuguese embroidery to show them (they oohed and aahed appropriately!), and my current embroidery to find the perfect thread for it. I found a lovely Gloriana silk which will work beautifully.

We were talking about the Portuguese embroidery and the linen that Margaret will need to stock for it. She likes to be very organised, seeing the book’s not going be out for some time yet! She suggested we have a look through what she had in stock to see if any of it would be suitable.

Now, at The Crewel Gobelin, all of the back wall is covered with bolts of linen and similar such fabrics. But that’s not where Margaret took me… she took me over to some drawers, opened them up and showed me a veritable treasure trove! I had NO IDEA that she had those drawers full of “special” linens! I asked why I had never known that they were there. She said, “you never asked.” I replied, “I didn’t know they were there to ask about!”

In these drawers she had bisso linen (a gossamer linen that has to be seen to be believed), linen cambric (I didn’t know such things still existed!), ecclesiastical linen, lots of legacy linen in different weights, and other rapturous stuff! Oh, it was pure delight! Many of the fabrics I recognised as ones that Mary Corbet has talked about in her wonderful descriptions of the linens she loves to use.

I still can’t believe that she’d never shown me these gorgeous linens before. I am the sort of person who would rather pay $$ for beautiful stuff like that than stoop to using boring linen like Zweigart… I just find Zweigart linens very ho hum.

I told Margaret that I was going to blog about it, because others need to know about these gorgeous linens as well. So, if you’re ever visiting Sydney’s northern suburbs, do drop in and see my good friends Margaret, Gill, Julie and Lyn at The Crewel Gobelin and ASK them about their drawers of gorgeous “secret” linen!