Golden Vines
Tricia writes:
Today we took a deep breath and started the goldwork on the jacket. I am in town all week working and couldn’t wait to start putting the gold to the jacket and making it come alive. I picked the collar as the silk work was all done on it. Here you can see part of a line
worked and on the second photo, you can see the coil done and a few tendrils worked in reverse chain.
To get going, I had to do a few tests to figure out what spacing we would use between repeats of the plaited braid. On the original jacket, the “v” is deeper than our version. I find when working with this stitch that the stitch width can be modified and the V is either
shallow or exaggerated. While one of the tests was able to get the same elongated V as the original piece, it seemed a bit sparse but worked faster and easier!. We don’t know exactly how thick the original thread was but I suspect it was thicker than what we are working with, which would have covered better even when worked with a larger spacing. I also suspect that it was more ductile and their needle had a larger eye but thinner shank. We had to change parameters on the thread to get it to work well and
couldn’t use such a thick thread. We will work ours more shallow to get a nice coverage with our (I think) thinner version of the gold thread.
Jill said it was much more bright and sparkly than she had imagined!
Tricia
Tags: collar, gold thread, needles, plaited braid stitch, Tricia
August 7th, 2008 at 6:28 am
What can I say other than WOW. It is so beautiful.
The wonderful silk embroidery, the lace with its spangles and now this gold work. This is going to be unimaginably beautiful.
CA
August 7th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Oh My! Reading your post and seeing the amazing work done was a wonderful way to start my day! Your stitches are incredible. I can’t wait to see more.
August 7th, 2008 at 9:27 am
And we thought it glowed with the gilt sylke twist. In full sun this will be blinding, they could probably land small planes with it as a beacon
:) :).
August 7th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Oh… My … Goodness. That is SO GORGEOUS!
I can hardly imagine what the whole thing will look like when all the gold is added. It’s so bright and … gold! And then, the spangles… Aren’t there spangles scattered here and there on the jacket? Or am I confusing jacket patterns?
How long did it take to do this bit? And what’s the stitching time estimate for all the gold on the jacket? Can you imagine trying to translate this type of work (I know it’s impossible) into a decent hourly wage, and calculate the cost of the jacket?!
Amazing work - beautiful, as usual!
September 1st, 2008 at 1:19 am
Oh wow.they are so beautiful.