I hope you’re having as excellent a time this week as I am. It’s school vacation week and I’m officially Not In The Office, although I am checking emails every morning which is hardly a burden. We’re having absolutely golden weather here in southeastern MA, sunny and warm with a light breeze. Fantastic.

Today I have eye candy for you, the fruits of Susan’s needlework skills, or some of them anyway, that she brought for show & tell at the April session. That first picture is a lovely assortment of different techniques.

The second is really amazing. It looked vaguely familiar to me, and when I turned it over and saw she’d only picked up threads on the surface of the fabric it looked even more familiar. She said it was Swedish darning (ooh, I hope I remembered that name right!) but was also called huck embroidery. Huck was the name I was thinking of when I saw it, but it was finer than I’d seen. Susan said she’d never seen any in person when she made that, and only later realized that sort of embroidery was usually done on a much larger scale. It looks great, though, doesn’t it?

Have another great day tomorrow.

And I even know what that is! And I can add links, which I’ve been doing, a little at a time as I remember where your blog is. I know lots more of you have blogs, would you send me a note or a link and I’ll add them?

Thanks for the dental floss needle threader idea, Norma; I’ll get us some of those and see if they work.

Here’s a picture for tonight, from last session’s show & tell. Abigail made this, it’s a ribbon corset. She told me a little about ribbon corsets, if I’m remembering rightly it was a fashion in the 19th century. It’s just gorgeous, and not just because I’m a sucker for Red. I’m constantly amazed and delighted by the variety of skills and talents all you dedicated needleworkers bring to show & tell and put up on your blogs. Thank you for sharing.

Here is a photo of the back of the jacket, taken last Friday, April 18.

This is the piece Tricia took home with her before our inaugural embroidery session last June. She had to work one of each motif, taking detailed photos of the steps in order to produce that fantastic instruction manual. That’s why she chose this piece, it has the biggest unbroken section of the master pattern. So for a while this piece had the most done on it, but since then the other parts have more or less caught up.

Before that first session she did instructions for several motifs, plenty to get us started, but only the plain silk ones; at the time we didn’t have any GST, it was still only a good idea, remember? CAN you remember before GST? She’s been adding motifs since then, first the ones that used only bisse, redde and carnation as those were the first three colors we got. Since then she’s been keeping ahead of what the embroiderers are doing, adding a new motif pretty much for every new session. Want to join us in May and see what new flower we’ll have?

At some point pretty early on Tricia started to work the bird in the middle of the back and then stopped because she thought there was a lot going on there and wanted some detailed pictures. I just got an email from her the other day, saying she’d been examining some of those detailed pictures and it seems there’s gold AND silver threads in the bird, and did we want to do that? It would mean tarnish eventually, not to mention sourcing the silver and the expense. Of course I said no. Why go to the trouble? The gold will be plenty.

I’M JUST KIDDING. Absolutely we’ll have silver too. We don’t know what “over the top” means.

Thanks for the positive comments on the divided carriers from Orleans Carpenters on Friday’s post. We’re grateful for their generosity, and pleased to be associated with them. By the way, there is a treat on the way to go with these carriers. It’s in development now and should be ready by the end of May. More later.

Last embroidery session was in the Wardrobe office. Several embroiderers have mentioned that one of the side benefits of being in the office is the chance to see the behind the scenes work going on - interpreters in period dress frequently come up for a pair of mittens or a fitting or to ask if anyone can help them with the fax machine. This was a little surprise on the last day of the April session, tiny Rebecca Prence stopped by with her grandmother, Mary Brewster. The pink peeking out of her gown is a knitted wool undershirt, based on the tiny one in the collection of the Museum of London. Thanks to Wendy for this photo.

Lyn from Canada was here last weekend embroidering on the jacket. She’s a veteran, she has worked on the jacket a couple of times before. On one of those trips last fall (before the snow set in) Lyn mentioned to Wendy that she’d be touring around Cape Cod for a few days before she headed back to Ontario. Wendy said, well, you have to stop in at Orleans Carpenters, Beth and Paul Dixon’s workshop on the Cape, where they make gorgeous Shaker boxes and some awesome needlework accessories. So Lyn did. And while there she told Beth all about the jacket project, and how she had come from Canada, and others from all parts of the US, and how fun and special it is.

Of course, I didn’t know about any of this. A couple of months later, I got a box with a lovely letter from Beth, and two of these:

I was overwhelmed. Beth, in her note, said that the jacket project sounded like a wonderful way to bring people together to serve a project that would add joy and beauty to the world and she wanted to support it somehow (I’m paraphrasing, because of course I’ve left the original at the office….). I was overwhelmed. The box, really a divided carrier, is just beautiful.

Beth and Paul’s original gift to the jacket has morphed into an even bigger gift to the jacket. The Dixons are selling these carriers for a limited time, and are donating $10 to the Textile Conservation Fund for each carrier sold. Go to their website, Orleans Carpenters, scroll down to the bottom of the left-hand list, and click on the Plimoth Plantation link. Even better, browse around for a while. They do beautiful work.

Thanks again, Beth and Paul, and thanks to Lyn for sharing our story, thanks to Wendy for helping Lyn and Beth meet, and thanks to you for supporting the Jacket!

Note to Susan, who in the comments asked if anyone was thinking about charting a reproduction of the EC sampler - YES! Elizabeth Creeden, noted expert in the field of historic needlework and popular teacher, is doing just that. I expect it won’t be ready for a bit, it’s a pretty big project, but you’ll see it here when it is. Thanks for asking!