WEST PARIS — The West Paris Library has announced a new art exhibit titled “Stitches from the Heart: the Crewel Work of the late Leone Bane Penley.” The exhibit will be on display through August.
The exquisite crewel work pieces, framed and displayed with information about each work, are the creation of a woman who developed her needlework skills early in life. Leone Bane was born in Frye in 1910. As a young girl, she helped her mother by sewing, by hand, middy blouses and skirts for herself and her two sisters.
After her marriage to Joe Penley in 1933, Leone and her husband left Maine for eight years while Joe pursued a career in forestry. They returned to Maine in 1940, when Joe joined the family clothespin business in West Paris. Leone continued sewing handmade clothes, but now she had a sewing machine to speed her creations for her growing family. She also began to make cross stich samplers to celebrate the birth of a child or a wedding in the family.
In the late 1950s, she became interested in crewel embroidery, an embroidery style that is believed to be at least a thousand years old. This freestyle technique uses special needles with large eyes and sharp points. The stiches are sewn onto a piece of fabric on which a designed has been pricked, drawn, stamped or silkscreened. The fabric is held taut by an embroidery hoop or frame. Many different embroidery stitches are used in crewelwork. Part of the skill of the artisan is in the choice of stitches. The choice of colors and the quality of the needlework are other ways in which the skill of the artisan can be seen. Leone excelled in each of these areas.
From 1960 through 1998, when she turned 89, she created numerous crewel embroidery pictures, pillows and stool covers. Many were given to family and friends as gifts. More than 25 of her pieces are on display. They represent 24 of her 38 years of crewelwork. Most are very ambitious works, some as large as three feet in length.
The pieces are on loan to the library from her daughter Elaine and granddaughters Lara and Stephanie, who have also prepared the exhibit notes and program.
For more information, call the library at 674-2004. The library is open Mondays and Wednesdays from 1:30 to 6 p.m., Wednesdays from 1:30 to 7 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
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- One of the pieces of crewel work by the late Leone Bane Penley on display at the West Paris Public Library.
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