LAYTON — It began with piano lessons. Jeanne Tams, who lives in Layton, had a sister-in-law in Ogden who taught music. So when she took her kids for those lessons, she looked for something to do while they played.
At first, she took along some crocheting. When her sister-in-law saw Tams' work, she got interested, but she didn't like crocheting. "So she signed us up for a class at Wal-Mart on Swedish embroidery."
They went to the class and liked what they learned. "We saw that the woman was selling patterns, and I thought, 'I can do that.' I started stitching up my own designs," says Tams.
That was in 1997, and she hasn't looked back. Now she has her own company, Avery Hill, where she markets kits and designs. She has published several books, has done designs for the American School of Needlework and is in the process of designing kits for Caron Yarns, which will be sold through Michaels and other craft stores.
Swedish embroidery goes by a bunch of different names. It is also known as huck weaving, huckery, huckaback darning, huck embroidery, Stockholm embroidery and punto yugoslavo.
It is embroidery, but it is different from other kinds of embroidery in that all the work is done on the surface of the cloth. You don't see any of the stitch work on the back. It is done on loosely woven cloth, such as huck toweling, monk's cloth or waffle cloth, that has a basketweave pattern. The stitchery is worked under the top threads of the weave, which are called "floats."
It is a very old needle art that originated in northwest Europe, says Tams. "Stitchers decorated their clothing, such as blouses, aprons, skirts, pockets, head coverings and vests with elaborate embroidery."
It became popular in the 1940s in America, she says, after a publication called Workbasket Magazine started printing some patterns. These were mostly done on huck toweling with embroidery floss to make decorative tea towels.
Nowadays, monk's cloth, which has a looser weave and larger floats, is probably the most common fabric used, says Tams. "Crafters make couch throws, baby blankets, pillows, wall hangings, pictures, table linens and clothing."
Tams herself has made all these things and more.
She grew up doing all kinds of crafts and needlework. "I'm fortunate to have a mother who loves them. She taught me to sew and knit as a young girl." But she loves Swedish weaving because, for one thing, "it's so much easier and kinder than counted cross-stitch. With that you have to count and stay in the lines. Here you only count."
The process is very simple, says Tams. All you need is cloth, yarn and a big-eye needle. Monk's cloth has four floats per inch. With that, Tams likes to use a No. 13 yarn needle or a flat bodkin needle. Before starting, she also likes to zigzag the raw edges to keep them from unraveling. Monk's cloth is 100 percent cotton and will shrink, so it should be prewashed.
To stitch the design, you usually start in the middle and, leaving enough thread for the other side, work the design to one edge. Once one side is done, you come back and do the other. Because monk's cloth is so loosely woven, it will get distorted if you try to go from one side to the other, especially on large projects, explains Tams.
Ease is not all that Swedish weaving has to recommend it. Tams also likes the fact that it is relatively inexpensive — "you can make a couch throw for $25-$30." And she likes that is moves along quickly. "You can get a couch throw done in a couple of weeks."
While kits are a great way to get started, she says, it is also a craft that allows for a lot of creativity and variation. There are standard patterns and designs, but you can pretty much do anything you want, she says. "You can take any clip-art, trace the outline and embroider that, then fill in the design with Swedish weaving." She used this technique to make a quilt that featured a rose design.
She has combined Swedish weaving with fabric stamp art — it made a fun picnic basket cover and napkins. She's used narrow ribbon instead of yarn to create a different look.
There are endless possibilities, she says.
And then, there's the whole color thing. Many of the designs use subtle gradations of one color to achieve a dramatic effect. But bright contrasts also work. So do variegated threads.
What's also fun, says Tams, is that monk's cloth now comes in a variety of colors. "It used to come in just white and a few neutral shades," she says. But now it comes in pink, light blue, yellow, lilac, sage, red, sapphire, Idaho Potato, rust, wine, purple, navy, hunter green and black and more.
Tams likes to think she had something to do with that. She gets her cloth from James Thompson Co. Inc., one of just two companies that she knows of that manufacture it. A while ago, her husband had called to check on an order, and when the person on the other end found out he was with Avery Hill, "she joked, 'Oh, so you're the one that started this mess.""
It's not quite the career Tams ever thought she would have. After all, she has a degree in math education from Utah State University. "But it's fun to do something different, something that not everyone else is doing. And there's always something new going on."
E-mail: carma@desnews.com