Tricia writes tonight:

 

One of the things that infrequently shows up in books on embroidery are close-ups of the work and the complex materials that embroiderers of the past had at their disposal to work with. I have taken a few close-up pictures of Joanna’s piece to share with you the complexity of things we no longer have for ourselves.

The first one is hard to describe and is shown in the close up of the woman’s bodice. I have seen this metal ‘thread’ on other embroideries of the period but it hasn’t been well described in any literature I have seen. This ‘thread’ looks like a purl thread that has been pulled to expand the loops and then half the loop has been smooshed (a technical term) to flatten the loop. The main part of the wire remains round. I would love to have this thread again – wouldn’t you! It makes such a lovely border.

If you look carefully at several of the pictures, there is a silk thread that is wrapped with a metal strip. But the metal strip is not tightly wound so that silk shows in between the wraps. This type of thread construction was widely used in the 17th century and often doesn’t show up well in photographs of pieces in books. The metal strip (either silver or silver gilt) has usually corroded and gives the silk embroidery a ‘grayed’ cast. On the historic jacket we are adapting, this type of thread construction is used for the main portions of the flowers in each motif. More on that later…I know you are hearing rumors and I will ‘unveil the surprise’ in September. If you can imagine what this might have looked like when the metal was still gleaming, it would have seemed as if the embroidery had been sprinkled with glitter. And if you haven’t realized this yet - if they used this type of thread on the jacket - that meant that they did detached buttonhole with it. And you
would be right.

Jill here. I’m bisecting this post because Bloggie thinks there are too many pictures for this number of words. At this time of night, I don’t ask questions, I merely obey. Rather than struggle with bad pictures I’m going to shift some to tomorrow. Which is, after all, another day. See you then.