Anyone remeber sewing at school where a form of cross stitch was done on 'Binca' 6 count fabric ?? I want to teach my daughter but cannot find any patterns so I wondered if there were any school sewing teachers out there that can send me details of the patterns/stitches we used to use. I remeber there were things like herringbone stitch and some kinds of running stitches in one colour with another colour weaved in and out of the stitches. Anyone remeber it or have any old pictures I could copy ???

Hi there

I have just been googling binca canvas so I could teach my 5 year old to do those sewing samplers we did at school and found your post. I don't even live in sheffield (edinburgh, in fact) but have joined the forum so I could reply to your post!

Did you get any other replies? I can remember running stitches (long, short, alternating long and short!), cross stitch, herringbone and also just series of diagonal lines but had totally forgotten about the running stitch with another colour in it! Did we do chain stitch too.... think that might have been for the 'advanced' sewers!

I have asked my mother in law, a recently retired primary school teacher, and she taught sewing and knitting, but can't really suggest any more stitches. She said she hadn't done sewing in class since the late 1980s due to lack of time in the curriculum which is such a shame.

I can't find anything really on the internet except there seems to be a book on amazon from 1964 on teaching children embroidery!

If you did get any more information, I'd love to hear about it, and if I find anything, I'll let you know! :)

ive got a book of stitchs at home which my mum bought for me many moons ago.

i know i definitely used some of them for sewing on binca after originally doing it at school.

ill dig it out tonight, have a double check and see how much use i think it may be. ill drop you a pm this evening helen if youre interested.


x

Hi There,

I found a couple of books on eBay but they were only available as postage to UK. I left Sheffield 12 years ago and now live in Crete so I couldn't buy them, there also seems to be a lot of Binca work being basically 'BIG' cross stitch. I hoped to attract some old needlecraft teachers to find the genuine patterns used at school in the 70's !!

Thanks Sophie, would be interested in anything! Have contacted a friend whose mum was a home economics teacher at secondary school, so she may have some ideas.:)

Cross stitch, a stitch like a backslash ///// - you can form herringbone with two rows of this, also 'Y' stitch (cant explain) serpentine stitch where you do two rows of normal slip stitch and weave another colour through them like a snake, box stitch (basically make little boxes) ... I could show you but cant tell you!!!