Welcome to My Parlor

Welcome to My Parlor by Ink Circles — designed as the 2024 Welcome Anniversary Pattern for Welcome Stitchery in Blue Earth, Minnesota — a small Halloween chart that riffs on the opening line of Mary Howitt’s 1829 cautionary poem “The Spider and the Fly”:

“Will you walk into my parlor?” said the Spider to the Fly, “‘Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.”

The chart shows the trap: a cosy Victorian sitting room laid out to lure a guest in — a deep-red velvet chesterfield sofa, a tall floor lamp with a yellow shade, a bouquet of purple flowers in a vase on a side table, an apothecary curio cabinet stocked with bottled jars and tinctures, a steaming teapot and teacup ready to be poured, and a matching red velvet armchair pulled up — all framed by ornate dark-iron Victorian curtain brackets at the corners. And then the punchline at top-right: a giant black-and-red widow spider descending into the parlor on her own thread, hostess waiting for her dinner. The wording — “Welcome” across the top, “To My Parlor” across the bottom — completes the invitation. Stitcher’s mark TT 24 in the lower left.

Stitched on 32ct Be Stitch Me Dusty Cottage Linen — a soft mottled hand-dyed oatmeal-beige that does the aged Victorian wallpaper background work without me having to stitch any setting around the furniture. Threads are DMC throughout, including the deep velvety reds for the upholstery and the Welcome / To My Parlor lettering.

Stitched as a shop-trip project — I travelled with friends to Welcome Stitchery for the first time to pick up the kit, and we sat together stitching it. Same shop where I later took the Beginner Hardanger Quaker Box class with Julie Norton.

Started August 26, 2024. Finished September 19, 2024.