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

The December session is over; everyone has gone home. We were small in number this time, but you could never tell that by how much was accomplished. Here’s Tricia talking with Cheryl S on the first day.

The second picture is Sharon, who earned the title ‘trefoil queen’ by completing at least four of the complicated multi-colored, 3-leaf motifs during this session. Even more impressive is that she left early the first day due to illness. Oh, and she also stitched an entire cornflower – calyx and all. Whew. In the background of this picture is Alison, whose move to Atlanta was prompted by just the sort of storm we had here yesterday.

Here’s Melanie Anne, whose friends wanted pictorial proof of how she’s been spending all her free time lately. Melanie Anne’s from Maine. They get lots of snow.

Safe travels home, everyone.

These drawings were sent in by Libbet (thanks Libbet). She copied them from some period representations of columbines. These, to me, look much more like a columbine, but maybe it is only because they show a side view. If the motif on the jacket is a different perspective, that might account for it.

The numbers in parentheses correspond to the master pattern. First up is the maybe the columbine(6). Like I said the other day, it may well look more like a columbine once it’s been stitched. We’re waiting for some of the new colors of gilt sylke twist.

Next one is honeysuckle. This has two numbers – the buds (12) which are stitched in this example, and the petals (11) which are waiting for the yellow gilt sylke twist.

This one is the borage(4). I can’t wait to see these stitched. They’re waiting for the blue gilt sylke twist. I’m pretty fond of blue, and pretty fond of borage flowers. They’re little, about 1/2" in diameter, and they look like tiny stars. They’re pretty cool, even if they’re not red.

This on the left is a pink or carnation (12). Its modern name is dianthus. The edges of the petals are fringed, which is clearly visible on the motif. Before ‘pink’ meant the color pink, it meant ‘little cuts’ (think of pinking shears), hence the name of the flower, which happened to also be the color pink and may well account for how the meaning evolved.

Next up are strawberries(2), with a flower(1).

Here’s a thistle(16). The calyx is ceylon stitch, which really gives the impression of the stiff, prickly thistle leaves.

On the left is a sweet pea flower (10).

I’ll take more pictures tomorrow, which is the first day of the December session. This session is the last one of this year. This feels momentous to me; when we start the next session we’ll be finishing the jacket "this year" instead of "next year".

Vacation alert: Speaking of this year, though, please note that Plimoth Plantation will be closed for the holiday from December 21 – January 2. Also, Kathy and I are both taking some time off around the holiday. We’ll be on vacation from December 14 – January 7. I’ll still be blogging, though.

Penny will be here through December 20 and will be back on the 2nd, so if you need something send her a message at our new laptop’s very own email address – colonialwardrobe@plimoth.org

Speaking of which, I blogged on the laptop today! (Squee!)

One thing we haven’t done yet is name all the motifs on the jacket. We may have mentioned some or talked about twelve major motifs, but I don’t think we have yet listed them all out. To help us with putting directions together and keeping track, we have used a numbering system for each motif. This number of the motif is shown in parentheses after the name. Well, here we go:

Flora

Strawberries (2) and strawberry flower (1)
Borage (4)
Columbine (6)  (note- this flower still eludes us but Susan North feels it might be*)
Pea Pods (9)
Sweet Pea (10)
Honeysuckle (11)
Honeysuckle Bud (12)
Bud or Rosehip (13 or 18)
Thistle (16)
Foxglove (19)
Cornflower (21)
Rose (22)
Pansy (23)
Pink or Carnation (24)

Fauna

Bird (5)
Butterfly with spiky wings (20)
Butterfly with rounded wings (15)
Simple Worm (7)
Worm with Head (20)

What you will notice is that there are numbers that are skipped.  They are the unique types of leaves that exist on the pattern repeat. Those who have been here already know that Motif #3 is a BIG and complex leaf. We call it a trefoil leaf. It can take the better part of a day to stitch. And it is the motif that is more prevalent on the whole jacket!  In all there are 27 motifs for the pattern repeat. What really gets me is that not only do we have these 27 different motifs, but they have color variations too. Plus we have one rogue motif on the piece. We are calling it our ‘where’s waldo’ motif. This folded flower – I suspect it might be a folded pansy or an unidentified bud – exists in one spot on the entire jacket.  Susan North gets the credit for pointing it out to me. The wonderful thing about this is that it exists on the panel at the Embroiderers Guild. More proof that there was a large master pattern that was being modified for each piece. This one was an oops. 

It will be a fun oops. We plan to have a picture of this unique motif on the display so the visitors can have fun looking for it. I won’t tell you where it is either – you have to visit or stitch to find out!

Tricia

Jill adds, Plimoth’s Associate Director of Historic Landscapes and horticulturalist Bob Hoxie was looking at the jacket a few weeks ago. I showed him the mystery flower and asked what he thought it might be, and he also said columbine, independently of Susan North’s opinion. That makes two votes for probably columbine. I’m curious to see how it looks stitched with the modern threads. Some of the period gilt sylke threads have faded which combined with the tarnishing of the silver on them makes them just look sort of a funny grey color. In the modern untarnished full color threads it might look a lot more like a columbine.

I’ll post photos of the motifs a few at a time. Today I have Motif #3, the trefoil leaf, and Motif #19 foxglove.

After a hurried email conference, we’ve decided we won’t be able to host lacers at the first two January sessions. The kits won’t be going out in time for folks to work the samples before the session, and we’re still a little up in the air as far as stock for the spangles.

Do sign up for one of these sessions:

Sunday January 20 – Wendesday January 23

Wednesday January 23 – Saturday January 26

Friday February 8 – Monday February 11

Monday February 11 – Thursday February 14

Friday February 29 – Monday March 3

Monday March 3 – Thursday March 6

See you in Plymouth!