The Plaited Braid
Tricia writes today. This is the second of four blogs she sent me before she left for Europe for two weeks. I tend not to read ahead when she sends me a few at once, but this time I’ve checked, and she answers most of your questions in the next three entries. I was going to skip tomorrow as it is a holiday in the States, but I can’t do that to you . . . look for Tricia’s #3 tomorrow and #4 Saturday. I’ll take a stab at the unanswered questions on Sunday. She sent no photo with this entry; I’ll repost the one from a couple of days ago. I believe all the different lines of stitching are the same stitch with different gold threads. Before you wonder where that nearly completed book is, blame the jacket - I think some of the time she had set aside to finish that book on gold stitches was actually spent on this project. Mea culpa.
Well, we have been asked a million questions about Plaited Braid over the last few months. And there has been a very lively set of exchanges between Jill, myself, other teachers, and readers of the blog who have been doing trials of their own. So I guess it is finally time to summarize this topic!
There are many people who have been on the trail of ‘Plaited Braid’ for years. I will try to recognize as many here as I can dig up in my memory! That said, there are two subjects to talk about. First, when we say ‘Plaited Braid Stitch’, what do we identify as that stitch? The second is how to do it.
On the first topic, I have been working on a book of gold stitches taken from 16th and 17th century English samplers and embroideries for years. Nearly complete, I have found almost 40 individual stitches worked in gold with different mechanics. Very few of them are identified in stitch anthologies. Even more frustrating is the
existence of several ‘braid’ stitches. Because they are difficult to decode, they have always ended up on the back burner. Now I have been going through my research photos trying to answer these questions.
What I have found is that there seems to be at minimum two stitches which can be called ‘plaited braid’. For awhile I thought that maybe we were looking at stitch density differences or maybe a bad stitcher here and there. But I have located one spot sampler where a queen stitch motif is filled in with both of the variants. Even more compelling is that one is worked in silver and the other gold. They repeat along the pattern in the same positions, implying that the stitcher identified them as distinctly different stitches. While I can’t share the photos from the museum here, one has a single V going down the middle and the other looks more woven like a herringbone.
So I believe that there was a family of ‘braid stitches’. In this family I also place stitches with related stitch mechanics such as the knot stitch (often called Braid Stitch). Now this creates difficulty because when you examine the published diagrams for “plaited braid”, the authors haven’t identified the objects they worked from or shown pictures. Therefore it is hard to say if any one set of directions is
“CORRECT” or “WRONG”.
Tomorrow I will talk about the directions I am familiar with and which ones we will be using.
Tricia
Tags: , gold thread, plaited braid stitch, Stitches, Tricia
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:43 am
Congratulations to Tricia and everyone working on the project for the new article in ‘Plimoth Life’. The close up of the cap Tricia stitched is an inspiration, and now I need more colours of the Gilt Sylke Twist!
The other articles are good as well, especially learning about all the other crafts at the plantation.
July 3rd, 2008 at 2:42 pm
It would be very interesting to have an experienced nalbinder look at the various braid stitches, because to my not very knowledgeable eye, these look almost like nalbinding sewn down instead of run in rows to make a knitted-like fabric.
As I’ve learned recently from research online, nalbinding/naalbindning/needlebinding is an old form of non-woven fabric, made with a length of thread/yarn on a needle, which doesn’t ravel like knitting or crochet. Some stitches look very much like braid, while others look more like crochet and knitting.
And in case anyone doubts that people come up with the same solutions again and again in different places, I “invented” button hole stitch nalbinding while trying to replicate knitting from memory when I was six or seven. I was very frustrated to figure out that I had to keep cutting new threads which was not what I remembered about knitting, and gave it up after two rows, but it was a very odd feeling to come across instructions for it 40 yrs later.
It looked just like the detached button hole embroidery stitch, very loose in my experiment, done tightly in the centuries old stocking example, and medium tension but teeny tiny in the petals and leaves here. Imagine if one of the petals usually done here slightly floating above the fabric, was instead totally unattached.
That close connection is partly what started me wondering about the braid stitch being connected to nalbinding in the first place. I wonder who thought “hey, lets stitch it right onto the fabric, instead of making braid normally and then stitching that down onto the fabric!”
Well, I doubt any of this is helpful, but I thought some of you might be entertained to see where my thoughts wandered while looking at the photos of the lovely stitch testing here.
love,
Lily
July 4th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Another thing that is similar to nalbinding, in its working and structure, is Viking wire weaving. Both it and nalbinding, however, have a tubular structure, while the braid stitches are more of a back and forth structure. The looping is similar, though.
July 6th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
thank you very much for the comments about nailbinding. I had actually been looking at finger braiding and other braiding with exactly that thought on mind. I have been ruminating about where and when that
leap to complex gold on cloth happened. I totally agree that the origins must be from some earlier point - especially for these braid stitches. The bonus is that I read your comments today after arriving in Stockholm. I will specifically look at the wonderful Nordic museum for clues this week - I know exactly where to go! The hunt is on!
Tricia