Four materials,
one of which is time

The cloth

A hand-woven cotton-linen, from a weaving family two valleys over from the workshop. It is a plain weave with a slub — the small thickenings you can feel with a thumb where the yarn varies — and it is that irregularity that makes counted cross-stitch look like something a person did rather than something a printer did.

The count is the actual thread count or holes-per-inch, which decides how fine the stitching can be — get this from the weaver. Undyed, it sits somewhere between oat and bone depending on the bolt and the light, and it will not match the photographs exactly because it does not match itself exactly.

Cotton and linen behave differently as they age, and this cloth does both. It softens quickly in the first month, keeps softening for about a year, and then stops. It creases, because linen creases; a piece that came out of a parcel folded will carry the folds for a few days and then forget them.

The thread

Six-strand mercerised embroidery cotton, the brand or mill — this matters to anyone who wants to repair a piece, and it is the single most useful thing on this page for them. Most pieces are worked with how many strands — two or three is usual, and it changes how the surface catches light.

The ruby is the house colour and the hardest to keep consistent across dye lots, which is why we buy it in quantity and why a piece bought two years apart may be a shade off its sibling. The greens and the gold are used sparingly, in the motifs rather than the grounds.

The dyes

The embroidery cotton is commercially dyed and colourfast, to which standard — say whether it is OEKO-TEX Standard 100 certified, and if it is, quote the certificate rather than the logo. We wash-test every new dye lot in the workshop before it goes onto white cloth, because the one failure mode that ruins a piece completely is red running into cream, and it cannot be undone.

We are asked often whether the dyes are natural. Mostly they are not, and we would rather say so. Natural dyes on a piece that will be washed, sat on and left in a window are a promise about colour that we cannot keep — unless a specific naturally-dyed range is introduced, in which case say which pieces, dyed with what, and what to expect from them.

Everything else in the parcel

• Cedar hoops, turned locally, on the framed hoop studies.
• Cotton tape and unbleached tissue for wrapping. No plastic anywhere in the parcel, including the tape on the outer box.
• A card with the maker’s name, her village, and the dates the piece was worked.
• Cushion covers are supplied with or without an inner pad — say which, and if without, say what size pad to buy, because it is the first question everyone asks. The closure is an envelope back, or a concealed zip — say which, and if it is a zip, whose.

Looking after it

Washing

Hand wash cool, at 30°C or below, with a mild detergent and no bleach and no biological powder. Do not soak, and do not leave it wet in a heap — that is how red finds cream. Wash a ruby piece on its own the first two or three times.

Wringing

Do not. Press the water out between two towels; a wrung piece of hand-woven linen comes back out of shape and the stitching pulls with it.

Drying

Flat, in shade, away from direct sun. Sun will fade the ruby before it fades the cloth, which is the worst order for that to happen in.

Pressing

Warm iron, on the reverse, over a cloth, while the piece is still slightly damp. Never iron directly onto the stitching — it flattens the thread and takes the light out of it, and it does not come back.

Dry cleaning

It will survive it, but the solvents dull the thread. If a piece needs it, ask for the gentlest process the cleaner has and tell them it is hand embroidery.

Storing

Folded loosely with tissue between the layers, somewhere dry. Not in a sealed plastic box: hill cotton holds moisture and plastic keeps it there.

Moths

They are after wool rather than cotton, so a linen piece is a low risk. Cedar in the drawer is enough, and it is what we use.

What will happen to it

The cloth will soften and pale slightly. The ruby will hold if it is kept out of direct sun and will go rose over a decade or so if it is not. The stitching will not loosen unless a thread is snagged and pulled, which is the one real danger — a claw, a ring, a zip on a coat.

None of that is damage. A hand-stitched piece is supposed to end up looking used, and the ones in the workshop that are thirty years old look considerably better than the ones that are new.

If it is snagged, or torn, or you have had it a long time

Send it back and we will repair it. Not as a warranty claim and not only in the first year — as a standing offer, for as long as the workshop exists. Write to the contact email address with a photograph first.

We will charge what a repair costs, if anything — and there is a real argument for it being free and a real argument for it being priced, but “contact us” without a number is the option that stops people asking, plus postage. Wherever we can, the repair is done by the woman who made it.

At the end of it

Cotton and linen are compostable and the thread is cotton too. There is no polyester in a piece unless an inner pad is supplied, in which case say what it is filled with, because it is almost certainly the only synthetic in the parcel. When a piece is genuinely done, it can go on the compost heap, and it will.