By PHYLLIS ZORN

Staff writer

Love of decorating with thread is in the veins of sisters Elaine Perkins and Wanda Salmans.

Perkins gravitates toward embroidery work; Salmans, toward tatting.

Perkins started doing embroidery when she was 8 years old.

“Mom started me on the basic stuff, and I liked doing it,” she said.

At first she did preprinted pieces. She then learned to design her own patterns.

Growing up, she loved taking her projects with her when the family went camping and fishing.

“My dad liked to go fishing, and I would take stuff to do while he was fishing,” Perkins said. “Camping was OK, but I didn’t like fishing.”

The sisters started selling embroidery and tatting work at craft sales in the mid-1990s, but only at indoor sales.

Perkins produces pillowcases, towels, placemats, tablecloths, and more.

Recently, she began doing some tatting and is working on Christmas ornaments.

She especially likes making towels because they are useful to people.

“I enjoy making useful things,” she said.

She gets her ideas for patterns from places such as a toddler shirt with a spaceship and a girl in a spacesuit.

She makes sweatshirts for family members, but doesn’t ordinarily offer the shirts at crafts sales.

“When you do it for sale, you have to have so many different sizes,” she said.

Salmans makes tatted bookmarks, doilies, ornaments, towels, and table covers. She also tats patterns on clothing.

She said she took up tatting when she worked opposite shifts from her husband.

“I needed something to do,” she said. “I make all this stuff, and it’s more than I need, so I sell it,” Salmans said.

Her favorite project was a tablecloth.

“I tried to make a tablecloth with small thread,” she said.

It was a long-running project that took years to complete.

“I’d work on it some and work on it some,” she said.

It turned out small, but she loved it anyway.

This year will be the first time the sisters will set up a booth at the Peabody American Legion Auxiliary arts and crafts sale Dec. 7.