Here’s Tricia continuing the story:

For the last two entries we have been talking about the sample embroidery we worked and the insights we have gained. Another insight is that of the pattern drafting.

Remember that Denise drafted the sample pattern from the photos and I worked the embroidery. Well, I had difficulties with some of her drafting as just the perimeters of some of the shapes were taken. When examining the photos and trying to apply the same stitch to the piece, I often had to add lines so I had anchor places for my detached stitches. Take a look at the photo. The borage flower can’t be worked as one piece as the direction of the detached buttonhole has to change for each petal. So each petal needed to be drawn separately. Looking at the close-ups of this flower showed that there were ’seam lines’ if you might call them that, which were visible in the flower.Because of this, our original plan to have Denise draft the pattern and trace it to the linen had to change. An embroiderer needed to draft the master pattern to take into account the lines which needed to be added (or subtracted in the case of the butteryfly’s detached wings). Unfortunately, Denise left Plimoth before she was able to transfer the pattern to the linen – so I got to do that too…but more on that in a later blog entry.

When looking at the numerous stumpwork or tent stitch pictures worked by girls and young women, you often see pattern lines that have not been covered. If the girl bought the piece with the transfer and then chose what stitches to use, the draftsman cannot decide what lines to omit or place to aid the stitcher. In the case of the jackets, I don’t recall seeing yet any lines that are uncovered. The exception of course is where a black thread has degraded, but the needle holes are still obvious. I wonder what this says about the relationship between the draftsman and the embroiderer. We do know from primary sources that these two professions could stand alone and were not always one and the same.

As we have been surveying the jackets and coifs with coiling stems, a pattern is starting to emerge about stitch choices for particular motifs. At this point I have seen numerous birds worked in trellis and spiral trellis. Trellis also seems to be the often chosen treatment for a butterfly body. This may have been more general than at first glance and may have been a constant in a particular workshop. If a draftsman was part of the staff, he may have been familiar with the code in the shop and able to transfer a very workable pattern for use. This is just a thought – a conjecture from a limited amount of data and our own observations. A fresh look at pieces in many collections would help to build a case for these and other hypotheses that are being developed as part of this ‘living history’. We put them out there to start to solicit comments from the collective memory of the readers of this blog.

Tricia

Tonight Tricia continues the story of how we chose which jacket to recreate. What have I been doing while she’s blogging? Well, taking pictures of Laura, for one. Here’s Laura in her first completed reproduction garment – a man’s shirt, which was basically underwear in the period. She did a great job and is now more than halfway through a cassock (outer garment) to go with. Laura is this year’s summer intern with the Colonial Wardrobe & Textiles Department (which right now consists of just the two of us and some dedicated volunteers). Talk about being thrown in at the deep end! Besides making new clothes, she’s spending a fair amount of time helping Kathy process kit orders, and as of today, keeping track of returned samples! Drumroll….we now have TWO completed samples in hand! I won’t mention last names here, but Wendy & Robbin, your samples safely arrived and are just beautiful.

Here’s Tricia:
A great off-shoot of making all the calculations from the last blog entry was the realization that each stitch type has its own materials cost and labor cost. So if you were a professional workshop of the past, the stitches chosen for a motif can dramatically change the cost to produce the jacket. Therefore, knowing these numbers could give us a ‘yard stick’ to use to evaluate historic pieces for their possible relative expense to one another. As an example spiral trellis takes a lot more silk than detached buttonhole or trellis stitch to work.

This came home to me when we were evaluating which jacket we would adapt. We were visiting a piece at the MET and it was beautiful Jill was struck by the gold thread stitch used for the vine, something I will call here “ladder stitch with zigzag interlacing”. It was dramatic and she was convinced that we should abandon the dreaded plaited braid in favor of this beautiful stitch. Having just taught this stitch on a piece the week before – I was horrified. The stitch consumed an enormous amount of thread, was worked in two passes, and took forever to work an inch. It made plaited braid look like a cake walk. So I convinced her to abandon this idea. (Yes, I gave up the idea, but in my defense, is that not a GORGEOUS stitch? JMH)But then the light bulb went off, why did the professionals use this stitch for this particular jacket? It must have been very expensive to work as it used more thread and more time. So who was the jacket made for? Did everyone who looked at the jacket when worn realize that it was more expensive and so it became a status symbol? When we have the chance some day to show pictures of the jacket, we can discuss why we think the piece may have been made for a child or very young girl. If so, why go to the expense? Who was she?

Another factor to consider was that jackets of this type were made over a 30 year time frame. Was this jacket early or late compared to others? And what was inflation like at that time? The materials and labor costs could be quite different along that spectrum of time, making something less or more expensive to produce depending on when it was made.

This was exciting. I plan to work a sample with rectangle samples and lengths of stitches of the period to measure the relative times and materials costs in the near future to give a more accurate set of data to use for these types of material culture investigations. Part of the purpose of the project has been to examine the past through the eyes of those that ‘did’. I think we are uncovering a lot of insights as we do so!

Tricia

Tricia’s been a whirlwind these past few days, tracking down frame parts from the four corners of the known world; figuring, refiguring, and figuring again how to most efficiently fit the pattern pieces onto the linen and the linen into the frames; not to mention generating fund-raising and product development ideas and answering all the questions I shoot over to her. On top of that, she’s written out some detailed explanations of the different “research & development” steps we’ve gone through but so far mentioned only briefly. This is not only interesting for you to read about, but accomplishes two of our stated goals – to thoroughly document all our work and to share that information as widely as possible. I’m also glad of the help with the blog this week; it gives me space to focus on getting all the details arranged for our June session, and to dress the final 2 new role-players (3 are all set and will begin work as Plymouth Colonists on Friday).

Tricia says:

We mentioned the time trials before in the blog, but I would like to give you a little more description of how that process went and what we learned. The completed sample is shown here. The sample was undertaken with many purposes. We needed a photo of something to encapsulate what the project was about. And it needed to be something that Plimoth Plantation ‘owned’. In other words, we couldn’t use a photo (and a good one doesn’t yet exist) of the historic jacket as we would need to get permission every time we wanted to use it. So a new sample was needed. We decided to make an incompletely worked piece to help communicate the ‘working’ aspect of this project.Jill gave a good recap of why at the last second the botanically correct blue borage was changed to red in a previous blog entry (Red, red, red). There was a proposal for the exhibit funding going out and something that attracted attention was needed. But the sample also would provide much needed data on the time to work the project and amounts of thread used so we could begin our planning process. We started with a four inch by four inch section of a jacket from the V&A (little did we know at this point that it would be the same jacket that we would choose to adapt). We chose this section because it had every type of stitch we might use on it. The design was drafted from a photograph and transferred to the linen in ink by Denise, a former tailor at Plimoth.

Using Au Ver a Soie Soie Perlee threads, I embroidered the piece and photographed it along the way. I kept a log during the entire process with entries for motif part, thread type and color used, stitch type, length of thread, and time taken. This data was then entered into a database and could be used for many calculations.

We estimated that the jacket pattern we were going to use by Janet Arnold had 1152 square inches of embroidered surface area. Our sample was roughly 16 square inches and we assumed that the amount of white space in the design was going to be the same for the sample and our final piece. Using the total time to embroider the piece, we could calculate that around 2300 hours would be needed. Assuming that every stitcher has her own pace and that I am on the fast side, we extended the estimate to between 2500-3000 hours. It will be exciting to see what it turns out to be. To help with future research, we intend to keep a log through the entire process.

From this data, the area of each motif and stitch area could be calculated (I used a small grid of 1/4″ squares to estimate area). This data was entered into my spreadsheet. Then it was simple calculations to get information like:

# minutes/sq inch for a particular stitch
# inches thread/sq inch for a particular stitch

This information was used as part of a larger database that is being filled in to give us thread use estimates per color. When you look at the jacket – it is hard to say that you need to buy 100 tubes of red or just 50. And we want to have the same dye lot for all the threads without ordering too much or under ordering.

Tomorrow we will continue this discussion to talk about how this data has given us insights into the professional workshops and the relative value of pieces of embroidery.

Tricia

Here’s the schedule for the June embroidery session. I expect the later sessions to be similar, with a combination of plenty of time for stitching, good food, conversation, and entertaining programs.

This bit of information applies to participants in all the sessions:

If you usually use a magnifier, please bring it. If you are able to bring a lamp, please do so. The chairs are wooden; if you would like a seat cushion, please bring one.

Please let Kathy know as soon as possible about any allergies or dietary restrictions.

This is what we’ll be doing in just a couple of weeks:

Tuesday, June 19

9:30 – 10:00 check-in, orientation, get acquainted; we’ll meet in the lobby of the Henry Hornblower II Visitors’ Center at Plimoth Plantation.

10:00 we’ll begin stitching in Accomack, across the path from the Visitors’ Center. We’ll have a mid-morning tea break when we’re ready.

1:00 lunch provided by Plimoth Plantation

2:00 – 5:30 stitching, with a tea & snacks break mid-afternoon

Dinner at Plimoth Plantation.

Evening program: Wendy White and Tricia Wilson Nguyen of Tokens & Trifles will teach a small project using perforated paper and motifs from Plimoth Plantation’s ‘EC’ sampler.

Wednesday, June 20

9:00 – 1:00 stitching, with a break for snacks and chat

1:00 lunch at Plimoth Plantation

2:00 – 3:30 stitching. The late afternoon is for seeing Plimoth Plantation, other Plymouth sites, and shopping.

Dinner on your own.

Thursday, June 21

Today is the filming for the PBS show Needle Arts Studio with Shay Pendray. I’ve scheduled a full day of stitching so whenever they want to film, we’ll be ready.

9:00 – 12:00 stitching

12:00 – 2:00 lunch, with a presentation by Kathleen Curtin, Plimoth Plantation’s Colonial Foodways Historian and author of Giving Thanks, Thanksgiving History & Recipes from the Pilgims to Pumpkin Pie

2:00 – 5:30 stitching, with a snacks break

Dinner at Plimoth Plantation

7:30 We’ll meet Peter Follansbee, joiner, in the Crafts Center. Peter will tell us about his work, especially how he lays out and carves designs on his beautiful reproduction furniture.

Friday, June 22

9:00 – 11:00 stitching

11:00 – tea and snacks break

11:30 tour of collection with Karin Goldstein, Curator of Originals

1:00 lunch

2:00 – 4:00 stitching

We’ll break at 4:00 today for thank yous & farewells & to give those driving an early start.

I’m really looking forward to meeting each of you. This promises to be an extraordinary experience.

Tonight Tricia finishes the story begun in yesterday’s post of how the pattern for the embroidered jacket was drafted. This story is just one example of the many things we’re learning by doing that might not have been discovered just by studying existing examples.

Well, after a long day of trying to come up with the right master pattern, Denise and I called it quits. I took the materials home and was to start again with a fresh vine tracing. As you can see in the photo, I covered the dining room table with pictures and kept staring at the sleeves, front, and back trying to work out what was going on with the piece. All of a sudden I could ’see it’ – a nice 3 x 4 coil block. The repeat leapt out at me and I quickly sketched it out. Then I took the motifs and cut them from our xeroxed tracings. Even though I assumed that I would have to totally redo the vine tracing because we had taken that from the EG panel, I placed the motifs in order on top of it. To my amazement it worked perfectly! I was stunned. Not only did the two historic pieces share many motifs and a very close stitch/color vocabulary – but they seemed to be built on the same coiling stem pattern. This is another piece of circumstantial evidence which leads to a conclusion that these pieces were worked from the same professional workshop.

From the experience, I conjecture that the following MIGHT be how some of these pieces were designed. A master coiling stem pattern would be drawn up by a draftsman on staff and would reside at the company. A set of standard motifs would then be available to choose from to place on this vine depending on the purpose of the intended object or the whim of the customer. That way some customization was available with with very little original design work.Something I had seen before seemed to support this hypothesis and a well timed business trip through Washington, D.C. provided the opportunity to check a rare book again. A very expensive and rare modern reproduction of The Great Book by Thomas Trevilian (1616) resides at the Folger Library in Washington, D.C. I have been viewing this and its original cousin (1608) by the same author for years everytime I am in town. Thomas Trevilian is thought by scholars to have been a draftsman of pattern for the decorative arts – woodworkers and embroiderers primarily. In any case, he certainly had access to many patterns. It seems late in his life he sat down (twice as he didn’t expire too quick)
to record in one place patterns he knew, had in his possession, or invented. We many never know which. He also recorded well know plates from other earlier publications in his manuscripts. Plate no. 947 in The Great Book (1616) is a coiled stem design which resembles closely those used for jackets such as our source and the Laton jacket. The one
thing that had always bothered me about this plate on other visits was that it was incomplete. This was unusual as the other hundred or so plates for embroidery in the books were complete and could easily be traced and repeated. This coiled stem was missing many of the leaves and small bugs that fill the voids.

Well, after the experience of making the master for our jacket, I wonder if the Trevilian plate is closer to what the professional workshop may have used. A master vine with many motifs which could be moved around and a few of the filler leaves/fauna that could be repeated where needed. Just enough to allow the draftsman to customize the pattern for a customer.

I will leave you with those thoughts and a few answers to some questions that were posed in the comments. A reader was interested in if we would publish the pattern on the web for download. The answer is no. We have been very fortunate to have such cooperation from the many institutions which house the historic embroideries, therefore we must respect their ownership of the intellectual property and design. We have been granted a one time use of the pattern at this point. That said, if many write in with such interest, we will explore a royalty relationship with theV&A and might publish the manual we are developing to stitch the jacket complete with the patterns. What I can say now is that Thistle Threads has entered into a contract with the V&A to adapt the jacket pattern into a series of kits using the same materials. These pieces will range from smalls to a larger piece that uses much of the repeat pattern. The kits will come out sometime in the early fall and will help to support both the V&A and Plimoth Plantation with part of the proceeds.This is the same reason why there aren’t any non-public domain historical pictures up yet on the blog. We are negotiating with the institutions for permission to use the photos we took of their collections on the blog. We really hope we will be able to do that in the future. Until then you may need to find a referenced book to see some of these beautiful images.

Tricia

Today Tricia Wilson Nguyen is guest-writing. The actual pattern development was carried out by Tricia and Denise Lebica, a former tailor with the Colonial Wardrobe Department, with help from Johanna Tower, who worked with us as both an intern and a tailor.

Tonight we will start a discussion of how the embroidery pattern for the jacket was developed. One of the considerations when we were choosing a jacket for the adaptation was how to draft the embroidery pattern. Our first choice jacket, the Laton jacket at theV&A museum, was behind glass and wouldn’t be able to be accessed for photography from all sides. A quick review of the available photos from scholars, the auction house and the V&A did not result in all the jacket being viewable, especially the all important back. It is on the back of the jacket where a photo can often be taken that shows much of the repeat of the pattern and has the least curvature. Many of you will realize that tracing a motif from a picture of a curved object won’t give you a true shape.

The eventual choice (V&A acc. number 1359-1900) kept coming to the top of our list as it has a close cousin in the collection of the Embroiderers’ Guild. Housed in Hampton court, and called both a cushion and a coif in different references, is a panel which is unmistakably related to the jacket design. The panel (EG acc. number 1982.79) has been photographed flat and contains nine of the twelve motifs that are on the jacket. The existing photography could be used to trace the related elements and give us a start, as well as the photography of the jacket itself. If you would like to see this piece, there are two publications which show it. The first is “Raised Embroidery” by Barbara and Roy Hirst. It is pictured in its entirety on page 9. A slightly cropped version of the photo is shown in “Treasures from the Embroiderers Guild Collection” edited by Elizabeth Benn. The panel is shown on page 15.

So to start, we referred to the on-line information on the jacket measurement, divided by the number of coils vertically and came up with a coil height of 4 inches. This matched our measurements on the jacket at the MET and so we thought we were off and running. We enlarged all the photography of the V&A jacket and the EG panel so that the coils matched this number. A week later, we had to rescale when costume curator Susan North (as a double check) pulled the jacket from storage and gave us specific measurements we requested. In fact the coil height was 2 5/8″. We were glad we checked as the published measurement was from the tip of the sleeve to the collar and not the bottom of the jacket to the collar!

Leaves of tracing paper were placed over sections in the photographs and 2 x 2 repeats were traced off both pieces until all the elements were captured. This required us to scan the pieces and check off motifs and their repeats until we had no more to scratch out. As you look at photos of the jackets, think about how confusing they look to the eye. The repeat in the pattern only shows up if you have a yard or more of the embroidered fabric to look at. But ours was cut up and reassembled in a jacket shape!

These tracing papers were then xeroxed in multiples (as well as rescaled to 2 5/8″). We used the mirror function on the xerox to get matchbook facing patterns, as they are on the front right and left. Now coming up with a vine was all that was left before we could cut and paste! Since a large area of the jacket wasn’t available to trace, the vine pattern that was available to us was the one on the panel. But it was mirrored down the middle of the panel, and we could tell that the jacket didn’t have this flip. So we traced the 3 x 3 vine to the right and then tiled it along a big piece of dressmaker’s paper. You can see Denise tracing the vine to extend it in the photo. At this point we had a large piece of paper with a vine all over it.

For our first attempt, we cut the motifs out of the paper and tried laying it over the vine (here you can see that in process). In some areas they fit well, for some we had to cut the vine out. We continued to refer to the photos of the panel and the jacket to try to put motifs in what would appear to be the correct order. At this point since we were mixing tracings from two different embroidery pieces, we were resigned that our pattern would be an adaptation of the original. Denise and I conferred on the placement of motifs and struggled to make sure that we didn’t have red flowers next to other red flowers and details like that. We never guessed that we might get to the ‘real pattern’…but more on that tomorrow night.Tricia

Hey, it’s JUNE. The month in which we’ll begin the real, actual embroidery. I’m excited.

Today we changed the room we’ll be stitching in for the June session. I have to say; never in my wildest dreams for this project did I imagine we’d have to deal with what to do with too many people. I had scary visions in which NO ONE wanted to work on the jacket. I had scary visions in which we couldn’t find appropriate materials. I had scary visions of the whole thing taking way too long. But never did I dream we’d have more embroiderers than we could fit.

So we decided to move from the medium-sized room in the Visitors’ Center that has pretty good light to a much bigger room in a building across the path. This building, called Accomack, has plenty of space with lots of windows, but the lighting in the center of the room is not great. We thought buying lamps would be easier than being crammed into a too-small room. This reminds me; if you’re accustomed to working with a magnifier, please bring it along. And the chairs are wooden, so if you think you’d like a cushion, please bring one.

Kathy is also sticking pins in me about the schedule for the session. I’m working on it, and so far can say for certain that we’ll be checking in Tuesday the 19^th beginning at 9:30 am in Plimoth Plantation’s Henry Hornblower II Visitors’ Center. We’ll begin stitching at 10:30 am in Accomack. We’ll end this session on Friday afternoon at 4:00 pm so those with a long drive can get started early. I have promised Kathy that I’ll send a proper, detailed schedule to the June participants before Monday morning. I will of course also post it here.

So speaking of the scary visions of not finding appropriate materials, the lovely new linen is still languishing in customs, but we no longer care. Tricia pretty much cornered the market on any of this linen already in the US and came up with one piece large enough to make the entire jacket. We really wanted to avoid cutting from two separate pieces because of concerns about differences in dye lot. After a lot of fiddling and figuring and planning and plotting, Tricia was able to make the largest piece work.

Next step is tracing the pattern shapes onto the linen, and then tracing the embroidery pattern on. All of which she’s going to take pictures of so we can share. Meanwhile, I’ll be making canvas cases in which to store & transport the frames, once the linen is mounted on them.

One last thing, some folks have had trouble finding Kathy’s contact info, so here it is again:

Kathy Roncarati, 508-746-1622 X 8114 or kroncarati@plimoth.org

And here’s mine: Jill M. Hall, 508-746-1622 X 8119 or jhall@plimoth.org