CONVICTS BUILD HOUSES

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 118, 9 August 1927, Page 7

CONVICTS BUILD HOUSES

A HUMANE REGIME Convicts have built a block of houses at Aberdeen, and at Glasgow have installed an entire electrical plant. This work, states the report of the Scottish Prison Commissioners, is part of the modern prison system, which aims to restore to society a normal man, cured of his criminality, and prepared for intellectual and industrial development. Prisoners are taught building, painting, carpentry, tailoring, shoemaking, and other trades likely to help them to obtain employment when released. Lectures, concerts, and Bible classes are arranged at all the prisons. “There is no doubt,” sums up Mr. P. Wallace, the superintendent of licence-holders, “that better results are obtained by this humane regime than by the punitive system of the past.”

COTTAGE COSIES ISxamining the other day some tea cosies made in the shape of country cottages, I came to the realisation how very simple these pretty cosies are to make. Any woman who has the average skill with an embroidery needle can turn out very creditable specimens. The cosy should be made in the customary squat shape, but with a piece of material inserted at each end to give the sides walls of the cottage. The cover must be made in cream or white cloth to represent plaster. Then comes the roof: this is merely a piece of brown felt or thick felted cloth, folded V-shaped and fixed with invisible stitches on the cosy. It just sits on the cosy like a hat, the edges being allowed to overlap the latter and so form eaves. The tops of the side walls of the cosy must be mitred off to fit the shape of the roof. Windows and doors are outlined on to the white walls in dark brown embroider}' silk, and if the embroideress has patience enough, oak beams may also be embroidered in on the upper part of the cottage to give a halftimbered effect. The garden and the creepers come next, and in that respect imagination

may run riot. All around the base of the cosy should be embroidered little growing plants with brightly-coloured flowers. There should be a certain amount of precision about the arrangement in order that the formality of herbaceous borders is suggested. Use simple stitches, avoiding elaboration, i Delphiniums, lupins, sunflowers, all j look well, if the heights are varied as much as possible. The creepers are I embroidered directly upon the walls I in the same way.