Another thing I’ve found, now that I’m working on the embroidery with something approaching regularity, is that once I get going, feeling the work is just as important as seeing it.

I was wondering if working in the Crafts Center would slow me down a little or a lot; most of the point of being there is to engage the museum’s visitors in conversation, after all. I thought looking up and down would cause me to lose my place and focus and impede progress. What I’ve found, though, is that people are quite happy to watch the work and don’t always need eye contact to keep the conversation going, for one thing. For another, feeling with the needle where the next stitch goes is really effective - both the detached buttonhole and trellis require you to loop the next row of stitches through the previous row. If you’re encountering resistance you likely haven’t got the right spot. I don’t mean to say I’m stitching without looking, only that looking up frequently doesn’t slow the work and is probably better for my eyes anyway.

Tonight, Tricia’s directions for the detached buttonhole needlelace. This is what she named the stitch for the completely detachable pieces, the pea pod covers and the butterfly over-wings. These three stitches (this one, trellis and detached buttonhole, links to which I posted earlier this week) are the most important right now. If you’re practicing, work on these.

See Robbin’s note in the comments about working trellis stitch up vs down; Tricia will send us a note too I’m sure and I’ll post that when we get it.

About the symposium conflicting with Rosh Hashanah, could someone let me know which parts of the weekend specifically conflict with observing the holiday? Linda left a comment about whether a person could attend the parts that don’t conflict, and in order to answer that or arrange things that way I’d need more information. Thanks. ETA: the symposium dates have been changed so as not to conflict with Rosh Hashanah. The New Dates are 24-27 September. jmh

Lace sample received from Linda K and embroidery sample from Nicole R. Thanks to both.

Tonight, Tricia’s Trellis Stitch Directions

The other thing visitors to the Crafts Center often say to me is, “you must have really good eyes.” Umm, no, actually. My eyesight is so poor that whenever I order new glasses the technician delicately suggests I go for the ultralight lenses “so they won’t look so thick.” I think my glasses correct my vision to almost - but not quite - 20/20.

Many people use magnifying lenses to work on the jacket. Good light plus my almost-coke-bottle glasses work fine for me. One thing I wonder, though, and seems to me true, can you train your eyes like your other muscles? When I first tried this work I had more of a hard time than I’m having now, after several months of practice. Can your eyes get used to seeing fine work like your arms can get used to picking up heavy bundles?

Colleen asked in the comments why I scheduled the Symposium to conflict with Rosh Hashanah. Not on purpose, but not completely unaware either. We had to schedule around other events at Plimoth, staying aware of (and avoiding) high visitation periods, and try to take advantage of hotel availability. We also tried hard to avoid known needlework events at other museums. Plus early autumn is a very pleasant time of year to visit Plymouth. I know we’re going to lose potential attendees because of the holiday and because we’re scheduled opposite a conference on furnishing fabrics at (I think) Colonial Williamsburg that same weekend. Sorry. ETA: The dates have been changed. The Symposium no longer conflicts with Rosh Hashanah. Please note the NEW dates are 24-27 September. jmh

Ahem. I owe an apology; Tricia sent me this information to post way back in February and I don’t think I ever did post it. I was looking for something else in my emails and found it. As a poor defense, the cover note mentioned that her sons had just come down with what my son was just getting over - a virus with high fever - and I must have still been boggled. I included a photo of Tammy working on the forehead cloth; it clearly shows the slate frame. Tammy was here about the same time Tricia sent this note; it was one of the snow-shortened sessions. Seems a long time ago now. I haven’t heard anyone say with certainty that they know the reason they’re called slate frames, by the way. Anyway, Tricia wrote:

Several people have asked where to get slate frames. As we talked early in the blog, we had a great deal of trouble finding slate frames in the USA for this project. There are one or two small makers in England but they wouldn’t export to the USA and we didn’t have the budget to fly there to get them! The frames that are pictured were a really nice product line that was manufactured in Europe for Access Commodities. A combination of factors resulted in these frames coming off the market a few years ago - the rising Euro, some manufacturing problems, and a brief intro of a lower quality copy by a vendor ended up resulting in the product line being taken off the market.

Access was great to take all the leftover on their shelves, seconds, and a list of what stores had formerly bought from them to allow me to find enough for the project. (What Tricia then did was call all the stores to see if they had anything left of their last orders. She usually leaves out the part about her tedious legwork.) We combined this with some long slats made by Plimoth staff and my entire vast personal collection (note again that STASH comes to the rescue!) and a wonderful stitcher’s stash (this generous stitcher has long-term loaned us a few essential frame parts) we found through the list from Access to complete the sizes we needed.

Recently Access has made a test run in-country to see if this product line can be brought back as a favor to me and because of interest in this project. I am testing out the new frames next week with a class I am teaching. (Since this post is so old, that test-run happened in February. It sounded like it went well. Norma B brought her nightcap project from that class to a show & tell at one of the sessions, all drawn out and laced into the frame.) If things go well, the frames might come back to market. I am sorry I can’t give a simple answer to the question of ‘how do I get a frame’. The good news is if everyone out there who wants a frame, requests it of their local shop , maybe you can help the push to get these back again as momentum is now in our favor.

This is again an example of how fragile the needlework market is. Fundamental products come and go off the market very easily. I made a friend years ago who was the retired R&D head of a major needle company in Germany and founder of a museum of needle technology. Germany and England had been the centers of the needle trade since the time our jacket was made. Today there is one English vendor and a French vendor. Between them they make 80% of all needles and brand them with different names. My friend
showed me hundreds of different types of needles that were made prior to WWI by dozens of companies. Needles that I knew must have existed to do embroidery I couldn’t do today because I couldn’t find the right needle. He showed me how the governments of England and Germany had restricted the product lines during the war to divert steel to munitions. When the war was over, women’s lives had changed so much that the demand wasn’t large enough to reintroduce the large variety again. Hence those forms of embroidery are now gone from our lexicon,effectively extinct. Today most needlework manufacturers are very small entities, entire product lines can disappear just because someone retires or there is a medical emergency in the family and the business owner needs to find a ‘real job’. I wish every stitcher knew the background on the products they use and understood the economics of the situation. It would stop all chart copying, sharing, and buying cut rate floss from big craft stores in a second. Unfortunately it is the big secret that no-one wants to talk about. While not everyone can afford to fill their closets - there are small everyday decisions when shopping for our craft passion that make or break the industry.

Tricia

I’m going to re-post Tricia’s excellent stitch instructions, in the downloadable pdfs that she has made available for the good of this project and the spread of embroidery knowledge. Please let me know if they don’t work for you, I’m trying a new way to do this. Here’s the first - detached buttonhole needlelace directions.

For the past two Sundays I have worked on the jacket (right front) in the Crafts Center. In the Crafts Center, modern artisans demonstrate 17th-century trades while creating artifacts for use on our sites or for sale in the museum’s gift shop. I’ve been so deep in this project for getting on two years now that it is very refreshing to show and talk about it with people who have never heard of this adventure before. Not to mention what a treat it is to have an entire day just to embroider and talk about one of my favorite subjects.

It is interesting, though, and I’m sure you’ve heard it too; many people remark that I must have a great deal of patience, or at least much more patience than they. The real truth, I think, is that everyone has something they do that others would find tedious or irksome or downright crazy-making. I know there are people who own long-haired pets and comb and/or brush them daily. And enjoy it. Amazing, and inconceivable to me. Yet I’ll sit still for hours making tiny loops and knots in fine thread, taking seven hours to cover maybe 4 square inches. Go figure.

I’ll be embroidering the jacket in the Crafts Center on Sunday July 20, Sunday July 27, and Sunday August 3. If you’re in the area, stop by and say hello.

Several of the stitches we’re using on the jacket have been diagrammed and illustrated by Tricia. Her directions and photos are fantastic, I think. They really helped me understand these stitches, none of which I’d ever tried before last summer.

Tricia hasn’t done up her own version of the plaited braid stitch instructions, though, and likely won’t for some time. Fortunately, Linda Connors of Calico Crossroads has, and has made them available through her website for a very small fee. Here’s a link to the searchable catalog for Calico Crossroads. Put in plaited braid stitch and it should come up; if not email Linda for help.

If you want to see images of the two original jackets we’re using for this project, go to the V&A website, to the collections page. Go to the ’search collections’ feature. In the search box type “Laton jacket” for many pictures of this jacket and the portrait of Margaret Laton wearing it. This jacket is the source of the garment pattern and the lace that we’re reproducing. To see the jacket bearing the embroidery pattern, put “1359-1900″ in the search field. There are fewer pictures of this one available, but they’re gorgeous.