Colonial Brick House in Needlepoint – Part 1

The first house is a brick house. This one has two stories, two chimneys, and a shallow roof. In addition to the threads in the last column, you will need dark gray Tapestry (#12) metallic for the windows and a black #5 perke cotton for the door. The canvas should be cut 6″ x 7″.

The windows are the main decorative feature in this kind of house. One aspect of windows in many houses of this period is that they are not the same height on the different floors of a building. Typically the upper stories have smaller windows, as is the case here. There are also no shutters. In a brick home, they would be on the inside.

The windows are the starting point for the house. Colonial windows are made up of smaller panes of glass, called lights, and are described by the number of lights in each half. The lower windows are 9 over 9 and the upper 6 over 6. I will add the dividers as long stitches using s ingle strand of silk or floss later today.

For the building to look correct and in proportion, decide on the size of the windows first. I decided that the division between the lights would be Backstitch, the horizontal sash would be one thread and that there would be a one thread frame around the windows. This made the lower windows 5 threads wide and 9 threads high. The upper windows are also five threads wide, but only 7 threads high.

Once the size of the windows is determined, you can figure out the size of the brick areas between them. Cashmere works perfectly for bricks and the size of that stitch is 2 threads high and 4 threads wide. Bricks can be laid in many kinds of patterns, but we’ll use the “usual” pattern, Flemish Bond, which is charted above. Yes the bricks are out of proportion with the windows, but this “reads” as brick and is suitable for this little ornament. Larger pieces will have bricks more in proportion.

In putting together the rest of the house, we need to pay attention to the space between the different parts of the house. This gave me 5 threads between the bottom of the windows and the ground, 6 threads between the rows of windows, and a differing number of threads between the windows.

One last note about the brick between the windows on the upper floor. You will notice that for some of them there are columns of brick. This isn’t unusual in older homes. Doing this you only need to cut one brick. If you used the bond, you would have to cut two. Not an insignificant fact when you don’t have power tools.

Tomorrow, in part 2, we’ll talk about the door and chimneys. The we’ll put the whole house together.