May be sent to

Plimoth Plantation

c/o Kim Corben, Development

PO Box 1620

Plymouth, MA 02362

Please write on your check or enclose with your contribution a note saying:

“Restricted to Embroidered Jacket Project” or something to that effect.

And thank you so much for asking!

Cheryl asked how much we need. I will sweep together the estimates and let you know in dollars, but here’s a list of expenses.

Every time we have an embroidery session we need to buy food supplies. It is most cost effective, not to mention most delicious to have Marcia cooking for us, we spend much less than if we bought food through a restaurant, but depending on number of participants and number of days we need $200-400.

We need to buy some supplies for the lace making; pins, prickers, cards for the prickings and some other things.

We need to buy the silver and gold for the teardrop spangles.

We need to buy the gold and silver threads for the lace.

We’ll need more GST, especially the first three colors – bisse, carnation and redde.

These are just materials costs; I’ll have to look up the figures on what we allowed (in the grant application) for a hired embroideress for the vines. Plus, I’m sure I’m forgetting something….

Ah, yes, I was just reminded about buying the sequins, the little round bits that’ll be sewn onto the cloth itself. (These were and, I think, still are made by coiling a wire and smacking it sharply to flatten it, Susan. The teardrop ones, though, were punched out of a flat piece of metal, almost a metal ribbon. The historic spangles themselves told us, by the striations visible at high magnification, by the ‘burls’ on the edges of the spangle and the edge of the hole, and by the irregular spangles, the ones punched too close to the edge of the ribbon or too close to their neighbor spangle. That’s the abridged version, but more will be coming soon, and with photos.)

Tricia has promised more blogs, including instructions for the plaited braid stitch and more on the teardrop spangle quest. I have on hand a few more blogs written by Wendy on spangle history, teardrop and other shapes, and I will start with those tomorrow, hopefully.

See you then.

Tricia writes:

Good Question. Jill has been asking me this question about once a month recently. I keep pretending I don’t hear her.

Of all the elements of the jacket, the vines are the only one that all touch. When it is continuous like that, it is hard to cover up the differences between stitchers. This is a really hard one; I don’t think anyone is prepared to do the entire jacket. Honestly, I had an arm injury three years ago that keeps me from intense stitching (especially anything with time pressure). I need help on this one.

Our plan A was to hire an expert (already identified) to stitch most of the vines in about three weeks and augment with one or two other people (volunteers like myself). But then the grant we were counting on was delayed and might not come until after the jacket is finished, so we have been shoe-stringing this project. Now it is time for plan B.

I can say that we should have a very small group stitch this part of the jacket to keep the uniformity needed to make it look really good. Now how to find that group of people. I would love to hear from those reading the blog with ideas. Is anyone interested in sample kits to try out for this little team? How about a fundraiser to pay for the labor? I am open to suggestions. Email them to me at tricia@alum.mit.edu

Tricia

Boy do I love this blog. I couldn’t find my notes on how much gold thread we needed and then remembered that we blogged about it! Sometimes you might read the blog and wonder why we go through all this detail and mindless calculations. Well, this is a perfect example. Not only did I find my answer, but also my estimation calculations and so I had confidence in the number.

1000 meters. Quite a bit of gold. Our friends at Au Ver a Soie found a cone of silk in a dark gold that fit Bill’s requirements. It is due to arrive here in the US this week and then it is off to England for a second spinning trial. Please don’t ask why this multiple ocean hopping is necessary, it really is the most efficient way at this point with all the language, currency, and industry differences. Trust me, I wish it were easier too.

When we did the stitching trials, I felt that the experimental thread was just slightly thicker than the No. 5 passing size that seemed to work a little better. We were willing to abandon the silk core but Bill really wants to give it one more try. He will reduce the number of ends of silk that are in the core from three to two. We will see if that makes it flexible and a bit thinner – but not too thin. Stay tuned!

Tricia

Tricia writes:

Before we get lots of questions, I thought I would add a blog about what needles we will use for the goldwork. You can see in this picture a #8 embroidery needle and something called a #10 Japanese needle.

In the 1600’s needle eyes were being made by both stamping and boring. Stamped eyes tend to be long ovals with burrs of metal inside where the two halves of the stamp come together. The bored eyes are drilled out and the eye is left smooth and round or oval shaped. There is more to this – but this is it in a nutshell.

There is some scant evidence from German needlemaking documents that goldwork was being done with egg-eyed needles. I have been working with historians/needle experts in Germany trying to find conclusive evidence for this hypothesis in relation to 16th-17th century English embroidery. Certainly I have found that using a needle of this description is the difference between a good experience and not being able to work with these metal threads at all. We do have evidence that needles that look like this were being made at this time frame.

I discovered this in the late 90’s when I was attending Japanese Embroidery classes (Kurenai-Kai) and had recently been studying a goldwork jacket at the MFA. It hit me that the Japanese handmade needles would be great for taking thick gold threads through the linen. I tried and found it worked great. Before that I had resisted teaching these types of stitches, as it was just too hard with conventional needles.

Artisans using ancient techniques make the Japanese needles. I know of one maker. If anyone out there is familiar with other makers in Japan or other countries, I would be very interested in hearing about them as the supply is sometimes difficult to get in the USA in bulk. There are twelve sizes available from the artisan that supplies Kurenai-Kai. Being hand made, they are also quite expensive – over $10 each. You try never to loose one! I have had the same set now for over 28 years.

Tricia

Let Down Your Plaited Braids.

Tricia’s writing again tonight, but first I want to mention the receipt of two more lace samples, from Carolyn W and Mary D.
Here you can see the trials stitched in plaited braid. What I found was that the 371 Gold Wire was the most flexible and easiest to stitch with. This made the line of plaited braid the fastest to stitch.

The Gilt No 5 Passing and 2% WM No 5 Passing were the second best to stitch with, but took almost 50% longer to work with. It is hard to say why this is. The thread is stiffer which might make the bend at the needle larger and therefore harder to pull through the fabric. Also, when working with the tight plaited braid, the stiff threads don’t separate as well when placing your needle under stitches to make passes.

Unfortunately the silk-cored Gilt No. 5 Passing took the longest to work with (two times the 371 gold wire time) and was the most difficult. The needle and thread didn’t go through the fabric as well as the others. It seemed very slightly larger – almost like a No 5.5 Passing. When we reported back to Bill, he asked if we could wait for a sample with one less end of silk in the core. We will wait.

The Leoni thread needs to be looked into a bit more. The thickness of the thread was thinner than we were looking for. It also seemed to be damaged in the spooling process with the wrap rubbed off in many places.

The good news was that we could use a real metal wrap; the bad news so far is that it takes longer to work and the silk core needs tweaking.

Tricia

Tricia writes tonight, beginning a “thread” about gold threads for the vines on the jacket. I’m most grateful, as we’re opening the museum two weeks from Saturday and the Day Job is insisting on more of my attention. I’ll try to take some photos tomorrow of that busy-ness. But tonight:

How I wish I could spin straw into gold these days! We are working on the gold thread for the vines on the jacket and we are closer to an answer, but not quite to a decision yet.

Bill at Golden Threads took a light yellow silk (Soie Ovale from Au Ver a Soie) and spun gilt strip onto it for us to try. We would love to use silk-cored gilt No. 5 passing for this jacket to be as close as we can get to the original historical thread within the economics of the project. We could use 2% WM gold strip, but since the project is funded mostly from your sample kit purchases at this point, that might be too rich for us.

I took a series of gold threads and stitched plaited braid at the same scale as the jacket close to each other to see which one could form the stitch well and how easy it was to form the stitch. One measure I used was how long it took me to stitch about 1.5 inches of the line with the thread.

Five threads were tried:

- #371 Gold Wire by Benton and Johnson. A great faux thread made by evaporating metal onto a plastic sheet and slitting it to wrap the core thread.
- The experimental thread by Golden Threads, three ends of Soie Ovale wrapped by gilt (electroplated) strip.
- Gilt No. 5 Passing by Golden Threads. The same gilt strip as above, but around a cotton or poly-cotton core
- 2% WM No. 5 Passing by Benton and Johnson. A higher amount of gold on the strip that results in a richer color. The threads of the time period were around 2.5% WM gold.
- A thinner gilt passing thread by Leoni in Germany

Here you can see all of these threads very close up. One of the things that distinguish western gold threads from Eastern (Asian) gold threads is the width of the wrap, these are very narrow. Also most western threads are wrapped with 100% metal instead of a foil on a strip of paper or plastic. The faux thread (#371) is an exception to that rule. Tomorrow the stitched plaited braid samples.

Tricia

Tricia writes tonight:

To answer the questions posed by Jill’s blog last night, here is the Glittering Nightcap. Remember back when I wrote about the development of Gilt Sylke Twist and mentioned “horse trading’? Well the Nightcap was part of that deal. To make sure that we could get the thread made, I offered to design a teaching piece and several kits/magazine projects that would use the thread so the volume of thread would be enough to get it off the ground. The Nightcap is the first of these projects. It used every one of the eight colors made (that is the seven for the jacket and a purple). It was taught three weeks ago at A Gathering of Embroiderers in Williamsburg. Thirty lucky and trusting ladies took the class and were able to get some gilt sylke twist. I say trusting because they all signed up for the class sight unseen as the project was finished only a few days ahead of time. Normally I don’t cut it so tight, but since the thread didn’t come until a month ahead, I had to embroider around the clock to get it done.

The nightcap is about 50% sized and fits over a needlework tools etui pyramid made from silk. It was fun to see the gold thread added to the gilt sylke twist and see how they play off each other. I add a few extra fun pictures here of a ‘family member’ wearing the cap before the last side seam was finished. My two sons also wore it to model for mommy. These embroideries were originally stitched with these threads to ‘move’ and so it was fun to see how they looked when worn.

So if you hear a rumor that ’someone’ has some GST, you know how. I was honoring my horse trading agreement!

Tricia

Jill here. Not only did Tricia use all the colors of GST, she also twisted two colors of thread together to transition between green and yellow in some of the leaves. This project is just too beautiful.

First, Gail J’s lace sample arrived safely.

The sharp-eyed reader award goes to Catherine K, who noticed Tricia’s completed “nightcap” in the photo on Friday. Tricia’s going to write about it so I didn’t photograph it for the blog, but I saw it in that picture and wondered if anyone else would notice. It is so beautiful and sweet and rich with color and texture. I kept turning it round and round in my hands admiring every bit. It is a preview of what the jacket will be, and I’m glad to say I couldn’t stop looking at it.

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to tease you all about the spangle meeting. I know that Tricia took lots of photos and is planning to blog on the process so I don’t want to steal the questers’ thunder. But I will clarify: here’s a picture of Mark, Tricia, Wendy and Geri, Tricia’s mom who was a special guest on Friday, examining images of historical spangles (many times enlarged) on Tricia’s laptop. Tricia’s dad, who was also a special guest for the day, is out of frame photo-documenting the research. They were comparing the silver that Mark has had electroplated with gold and then rolled flat to the historic examples. They weren’t entirely happy, so Mark is getting more silver and fine-tuning the process. We don’t have a little heap of spangles, and I’m sorry if I misled you to thinking we were at that point, but we are a big step closer to figuring this out.

Thanks to Carolyn H for bringing some concerns to my attention. Many lacers are worried that we will give up on the lace because the whole process is sliding later and later into the spring. I’m afraid I don’t have a carved-in-stone road map of how the rest of the project is going to unfold. On the other hand, I didn’t have one so far and we’ve made a remarkable, fantastic amount of progress. Lots of our assumptions coming in were guesses, including how long it would take to create the jacket. I feel confident that our estimate of person-hours will hold up, but what was less definable (and still is) was how many months it would take to put in that many person-hours.

All of which to say, I posted a list of possible sessions for the spring/early summer. I avoided Mothers’ and Fathers’ Day, and Memorial Day, thinking folks would have other plans. I threw a bunch of other weekends up on the wall to see what would stick. If none of those weekends work for you, don’t assume you can’t come. Assume, instead, that I don’t know what would be most convenient. Send me a list of dates. Maybe there are half a dozen embroiderers/lacers who think the perfect Mothers’ Day would be to spend a long weekend indulging their favorite hobby. I’m flexible, and will adapt to further the mission.

Several times already we’ve endured setbacks and/or delays. All (the linen in customs, the development of Gilt Sylke Twist, the long wait for the second set of colors of GST, the search for appropriate metal threads, etc) have caused us to rethink, regroup, refocus. None have derailed the project, or even delayed it very much. If all of a sudden no volunteers wanted to work on it anymore (perish the thought) we would regroup and forge ahead with a different game plan. We can’t stop now, it’s too late, and besides, this jacket wants to be made. It’s out of our hands.

We also, right now, don’t have an immovable drop-dead date by which we’ll have to abandon the spangle quest. I know the delays are really frustrating, but we’re nowhere near the point of going to our spangle back-up plan (yup, there is one). If we ever get there, we’ll go to the back-up plan and begin lace production right away. This jacket wants to have lace.

So please don’t worry. If you have an idea or a question or a concern, please let me know. jhall@plimoth.org This will all work out, not the way we thought at first, I’m sure, but how we can best make it work for everybody.

Here’s a fun picture. The bag and book come from Wendy’s collection. She got the bag first and found directions for how to make it, or something so similar they must be related, in this book. Pretty neat.