Linda is testing linens and silks for a new project – she’s volunteered to make a handkerchief with a double running stitch border for Plimoth Plantation. When she came to embroider in September I gave her samples of the three linens we had on hand. Two were unevenly woven and so unsuitable. This is the best sample (well, the embroidery on each sample was exquisite – this is the best linen), but the linen is a little too coarse. I’m going to send her another piece of linen, a kind we didn’t have in stock last month. Maybe that will work. Or we’ll keep looking. 

The pattern is from a handkerchief in the V&A (where else? They have everything.) Of course I don’t have the accession number right now, but Linda mentioned there’s a problem with searching their collections with the accession number; something doesn’t quite match. The inspiration hanky is embroidered with red silk and has gold metal bobbin lace. Actually, it’s the same hanky that inspired Kate to make hers but she used a different pattern. 

The pattern on the original handkerchief is charted in The New Carolingian Modelbook. AND, Linda noticed, the same pattern with different filling stitches appears on the 17^th century sampler described and charted by Kathleen Epstein (now Staples) in her book An Anonymous Woman her work wrought in the 17^th Century. Synchronicity. (Linda used Italian cross stitch for the filling stitch on this sample, and was pleased with the effect.) 

I hope all that was interesting and not horridly confusing. I have to go now to rest up for tomorrow, the first day of the October embroidery session. Oh, yes, and to watch the Red Sox. But I’ll be resting. Go Sox.