This week we’re trying to finish up some warm garments for the interpreters before the start of the next embroidery session. Yesterday I showed you the blue gown I’m working on.

Here’s Shaina’s project. This is her first doublet. A doublet is a man’s upper body garment. It’s the most fitted garment we make for men, and she’s doing a great job. It fits her pretty nicely, but it fits the man she’s making it for even better. It’s a beautiful, smooth charcoal grey color, an example of how really beautiful a piece of wool can be when it’s a good quality. The striped lining is hemp/cotton and very sharp looking. She’s just got the buttonholes left to do and then it’ll be done.

There’s Penny using the new laptop to make labels for knitting kits, and to keep track of what’s being sent where. Eight more knitting kits are in my trunk, to be taken to the PO tomorrow morning.

When I’m hand sewing, what am I doing? Here are some pictures of my current project. So far it is just the bodice part of what will be a gown in simple blue wool. I lined the front of the bodice in brown linen mostly because when I was cutting it out there wasn’t enough washed coarse cream linen for the whole lining. I cut the sleeves and back out of the cream and the fronts out of brown linen. That’s a period thing too, though, cutting the part of the lining that might show out of a better cloth than the rest of the lining. So convenience and historical precedent jump together as it were.

I’ve been stab-stitching, or I’ve also seen it called half-back stitching, the outside to the lining, all the way around. We, the three of us who make all the period clothing for the interpreters, sew internal seams on sewing machines because we’d never be able to keep up without that time-saver. But everything that shows is done by hand; buttonholes, pleats, hems, and this half back stitching around the waist, up the fronts, around the neck and around the sleeves.

I have yet to sew the buttonholes and put on the buttons, stitch on the wings (little flaps that go over the shoulders) and pleat the petticoat part. The pleats will be sewn directly to the finished waistline. At that point I’ll try it on the intended wearer to mark the hem and then hem it.

For this gown I’m going to sew horizontal stripes in the petticoat in brown wool. This interpreter is playing Mrs Standish this fall, and it will be done in time for her to wear at least a little bit before we close for the season, but next year she’ll likely be someone different. I wanted to make a nice gown, but not too nice, so she’ll be able to wear it again next year no matter which character she’s playing.

During the October session, the Spangle Group (Mark, Tricia, Wendy) met to talk over the spangle research. By spangles, I mean the teardrop-shaped metal tags that are strung on the metal threads used to make the bobbin lace. I have learned from Carolyn that to lacers, spangles mean beaded rings that decorate (and weight) bobbins that are used for a particular kind of lace making. Not those spangles.

Anyway, Mark and Tricia and Wendy came up with a hypothesis as to how those spangles were made in the 17^th century. Mark went away for a while with some flat metal ribbon from Tricia’s stash. He came back not too much later with a tiny paper wrapped package.

 This is what was in it. He made a tool, a spangle punch. This tool is round, the one we’ll need is teardrop shaped, but he was testing the theory. He also had punched a few round sequins from the metal ribbon. The tool is tiny, maybe 5/8” long.

What Mark and Tricia and Wendy were seeing on the original spangles from the MFA, the way the metal curled or broke, the shape of the individual spangles, and so on, they saw these same things in the ones Mark made. Success.

Very exciting. We’ve got the process, now we need some wider metal ribbon to punch the spangles out of. Tricia is tracking down possible manufacturers of such metal stock and Mark is working on making the right size and shape tool to do the job.

I can hear murmuring; yes, we’ve talked about the possibility of offering spangles for sale to lacers and embroiderers. Nothing’s definite yet, but we do know there’s a desire for them so we’ll see what we can do.

One more milestone today, Tricia emailed me that she’s ordered the threads we need to make the lace. A big day all around.

Today we were even more in the 17^th century than usual. Saturday there was a big wind and rain storm that affected southeastern New England. Power went out at the office in the morning (only a little while after Penny got in, apparently) and hasn’t been back since.

When I got in this morning, we got a call saying power would be back within the hour, so we all settled down with some hand sewing near the sunny window. This was fine for a few hours, but then the sun started to move away from the window and we all got hungry. Our lunches needed heating so we packed up our hand sewing and headed home.

As I was pulling out of the parking lot the electric company trucks were coming up the drive so I’m assuming the problem’s been sorted out and we’ll have electricity tomorrow.

I’ll get back to the emails tomorrow, and I plan to post from the shiny new laptop just for kicks. I need to put together a schedule for the November embroiderers and put together some more kits for knitters.

It was a nice interlude today, though. Quiet, and somehow spending time just sewing felt like a treat that I don’t get to indulge in much lately.

Old Business: Thanks for the comment about yesterday’s post, Amy. I was feeling a little guilty this morning, like I was whining about my office computer which I totally didn’t mean to do. (Honestly, partly because if it gets offended it might just Quit. Heaven forbid.) Somewhat outdated technology is just the way it is at non-profits, ours isn’t any different, and from talking with some colleagues, we’re actually in a lot better shape than many places. And, before The Jacket, what we had was really pretty adequate for what I needed to do. But this project has kicked my daily work into a different category; correspondence, scheduling, blogging (17^th century meets 21^st century in a wild way), powerpoint presentations, images to edit and keep track of, and all the data management. This gift really is a gift, and will make an immediate, positive difference in our daily work. Thanks Carolyn and Marilyn for seconding the pats on the back to Robbin. We so much appreciate her effort.

New Business: The other day I strolled into my hometown post office with a handful of largish envelopes. It was a bit of a ruse, actually, since my trunk was full of similar envelopes. I didn’t want to overwhelm.

The envelopes were intended to go to addresses all over the US and even one to Canada, filled with instructions and yarn for generous talented knitters to turn into warm stockings and gloves for interpreters.

I know the post office gets a lot of flak from here & there, but I love my local PO. No matter what I walk in with, or how busy it is, I get smiling helpful service. (I think that’s why they’re always busy – they’re the best PO in four towns.) Thursday, in just over half an hour, two dozen knitting kits were weighed, stamped and on their way, and I was on my way too.

This was a big bundle all at once, and thanks to Penny for coordinating, packaging and labeling. We’ve sent out a few before this batch, including the first kit of all to Abigail’s friend Veronica, who sent us back a cap and pair of stockings in 15 days. Amazing. We’ll be sending more out early next week. So if you’re expecting a kit from us, watch your mail.

The knitted items add a layer of richness and detail to our living history sites. Knitted stockings are historically appropriate to the 1620s, but without volunteer knitters we wouldn’t be able to keep up; we’d have to use the faster but less accurate sewn cloth kind.

Thanks to all the knitters who have volunteered, thanks for spreading the word to your other knitting friends, and thanks especially from the interpreters who will be the beneficiaries of your time and skill.

We got a new toy today. Robbin, one of our steadfast embroiderers and who is also on the lace committee, works at IBM. Through an IBM program, she applied for a community grant on behalf of the embroidered jacket project. We were able to ask for a cash donation or a gift of technology. Living as we do in the 17^th century (I kid you not) we voted for the technology.

Our brand new ThinkPad arrived yesterday afternoon. Shaina and Penny kindly waited for me to come in this morning to open it. We spent most of the day smiling at it. Here are Shaina and Penny admiring, surrounded by the packaging.

We have a computer in the office, but it is Old and Tired and doesn’t do very many things. I’m totally grateful for it as many of my co-workers are laboring with older machines, but that’s how it is sometimes. We treat it gently. Shaina has her own personal shiny laptop which does lots of useful things and she encourages it in good work for the department. But this, this is 21^st century.

Fortunately both Shaina and Penny can speak up to date computer and made friends with our new toy. We took turns playing with it to see how many wonderful things it can do that will make organizing various aspects of the jacket project easier (the answer is many wonderful things). It will make blogging a lot more convenient and speedier, too.

Needless to say, we’re hugely grateful to Robbin for thinking of us, doing the paperwork and submitting the request for the community grant, and grateful to IBM for the gift.

Happy, happy!