Tricia resumes the thread of the story (pun intended):

I was so excited with a possible solution that night that I took the silk gobelin I was working with and ‘made’ a wire wrapped thread by expanding a purl on the silk after threading the two. I placed my fingernails on the first spiral and pulled out the rest of the ’spring’. You can see the expanded spring on the thread here.

Next, could it be embroidered with? This picture shows a small rectangle of detached buttonhole worked with this homemade thread. Exciting as it glittered in my lamplight. But it doesn’t quite match the historic photos. (Note: we can’t put any historic photos up as we would need to pay royalties on the number of times people visit this site - please visit the V&A website to see close-ups of the jacket). In the historic photos, the metal stayed wrapped around the silk tightly when it was stitched. In my sample, the metal wire seemed to detach and stick out.

I wondered if this was because the threads weren’t the right scale, maybe I needed a thicker thread in the center. So I got out some green soie perlee. Again I expanded a purl on the silk and then stitched with it. As you can see here, it wasn’t much better. So what was the problem???

Tricia

Here are Penny and Shaina, carrying on the usual winter work of the Colonial Wardrobe department. I took this during the December session last week. I think here they’re trying to decide whether that shirt is worth saving or is ready to be recycled as a rag.

Behind Penny you can glimpse one of the several racks full of washed clothing awaiting mending.Penny and Shaina, aided by our valiant volunteers and Paulette and Norah (that second picture is Norah, who has also been doing a little jacket embroidery this week, after a tutorial or two from Tricia last week), our December helpers from the Colonial Interpretation Department, have been doing a record quick job of washing and mending. This is especially important this winter as we’ve got so much else going on, including four embroidery sessions in January alone. I’d like to thank them all for their hard work and good humour and wish them happy, restful holidays.

Tricia continues the story of the research & development that led to the production of gilt sylke twist.

At the time we were starting this project, I was aware of only four authentic western style gold thread makers in the world: one in Spain, one in France and two in England. I am now familiar with one in Germany/Italy. I had regularly been working with the two English companies and had recently collaborated with Golden Threads to remake some threads for some of my teaching projects. 

I contacted both Benton and Johnson and Golden Threads and explored if they would be amenable to remaking this thread. If you want to get a better idea of what the thread looked like - check the close pictures of the jacket on the V&A website. While Benton and Johnson was understandably hesitant, Bill Barns (Golden Threads) was willing to talk. Bill pointed out to me that the gilt wire wasn’t that much of a problem to source, but the silk thread base was something that he couldn’t source. 

Understanding that, I set to thinking about the problem. About this time, I was working on a project using the gilt purls (also called bullions) that these companies make. These are small springs made with very thin gilt wire. I was stitching them down to the project by threading a silk thread and needle through the center of the purl. Well, sometimes the wire end catches on the silk and well, stretches. 

Sometimes when you have a ‘problem’ you are working on, a happy accident will show you a way. This was one of these times. When the purl stretches along the silk, it looks like the thread I was trying to convince Bill to make. Hmmmm….could that be a solution? It would certainly be much easier to buy a lot of gilt purl and then thread a thick silk thread of whatever color we wanted through the middle and then stretch the purl out over the silk. Each stitcher could make their threads 12-14 inches at a time. It could solve our silk sourcing problem and would be an economic solution too!

Next time - the experiments.

Tricia

I mentioned the other day that Sharon embroidered several trefoil leaves during this session. The trefoil leaves are not most stitchers’ favorite motif. They have several things going against them - they have toothed leaves, so you have to fuss with stitching the detached buttonhole across tiny spaces; they’re stitched only in plain silk - no gilt sylke twist; they have multiple colors per leaf, so you have to change the color of the reverse chain when doing the outline; and, most damning of all, they are MANY. They seem to have been the pattern maker’s way of filling spaces.

Most of the time we ask every stitcher to start the session with one trefoil, just so we can knock the number down, and it’s sort of a way of eating your vegetables before going on to the dessert of working with the gilt sylke twist. But this session, Sharon committed right away to doing several, in fact to finishing all of the full and partial trefoils on the sleeve piece she was working on. Because she was determined, she worked on two or three motifs at the same time and she found it went much more quickly than doing one complete motif before moving on. This time she’d work all the dark green on each motif, then move to all the medium green, then all the gold. We were all amazed at her progress, especially since one of the four days was shortened by weather (the museum closed at 2:00 PM Thursday due to a nasty winter storm) and another day Sharon left early because she was suffering from a cold.

Sharon topped off her week by stitching a complete cornflower - the green calyx and all the petals in two shades of blue. Whew.

Besides all that, Sharon brought a gorgeous piece of her own embroidery to share with us - a reversible sampler that she actually unframed for the trip.

Check out how many spots of color there are on that sleeve Sharon’s working. Of course there’s still a lot to be done, but the progress is visible now. After each of the first several sessions you’d look and say, oh, how nice. TWO spots of color on that big blank piece. Not anymore. And especially adding the new colors which, to answer the questions in the comments, yes will be available for purchase soon, and I’ll let you know here.

Tricia wrote this for me, as I’m supposed to be on vacation. Over several days she’ll be telling us the story of the development of the gilt sylke twist threads. I was there through this process, and I’m finding it fascinating reading! I hope you enjoy the story as much. JMH

We had a wonderful event last week at the session - we added the first blue colors to the jacket. As you can see in the photo, we are working on the cornflowers using the two new gilt sylke twist colors. It looks lovely!

I promised before Thanksgiving that I would tell the story of this wonderful thread, an odyssey that has been a semi-secret for almost a year now. Well, it all started with the first meeting at Plimoth between myself and the staff and John, the director of the museum. We were talking about the threads that would be needed for the project and I pointed out in some of the photographs that many of the threads used in this time period are composite threads. Composite threads are those that combine two or more materials.  You are familiar with gold threads - a flat strip of metal wrapped around a core (silk, cotton, or linen) such that the wraps touch and you don’t see any of the core. Well, there were a wide variety of threads that were made, some of which I have pointed out in earlier blogs.  In particular, many of the jackets are embroidered with a silk thread wrapped with a very thin wire such that much of the silk shows. The effect of doing detached buttonhole with this type of threads would be that the flowers would appear sprinkled with glitter. John and the staff were mesmerized by this description.

Well, John asked me if it was possible to get some of these threads so we could be accurate with our reproduction. I told him that they weren’t made anymore. Well, he laid down the gauntlet and asked if it was possible to have them made.  As both an engineer and historic embroidery teacher, I have been working towards getting many of these threads made again. Usually it involves a great deal of effort to provide an economic reason and to solve raw material sourcing problems with a manufacturer you are working with. I was thrilled that he was committed to accuracy for this project and promised that I would see ‘what it would take’ and give it a try. 

Trying to have an entire line of threads remade at the beginning of a big embroidery project is crazy. Very crazy.  It is better to start out with all your materials ready and in your hands so your progress can move forward.  But this was one of those ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunities. The project held the potential to give that ‘economic reason’ to the manufacturers of gold threads. We would need a great deal of thread and thus it might be worth their while to figure it out.

Tomorrow - tests and trials

Tricia