After spending all week here working on instructions and doing experimental archeology, as Jill puts it, it was nice to have a crew come in to make a nice push on the pieces. We have seven people here today working on embroidery and lace. Speaking of the lace, Carolyn has come today to set more lace pieces up and rewind gold onto a bobbin that has run out. Here you see her preparing the bobbin before she will do some lace magic (to me at least) and add the end into the existing lace under work.

I had fun looking at the long piece on the pad that was already finished – is it me or does the lace seem to go faster than the embroidery? She let me unroll it, almost 40″ done on this one piece already. Here you can see how lovely it is. I admit that I wrapped it around myself to see how pretty it was. It was. But that is as close as I am getting to wearing the jacket, it’s not my size.

Tricia

One of the interesting things about the original jacket is the mistakes or variances we keep finding on the piece. One of the most intriguing is the butterfly heads. All of the heads on the jacket are done in a golden brown tone using trellis stitch, EXCEPT the ones on the outer left sleeve. These are all done in a bright blue satin stitch. For easily a month I assumed that it was the result of either bad conservation or an addition at a much later date. That was until I looked closely at the photograph of the piece at the Embroiderer’s Guild collection which was worked in the same workshop with the same pattern. Low and behold, the worm heads on that piece were all in bright blue satin stitch!

I imagine that the workshop was full of pieces underway – a few jackets, a coif, some panels, and others. Embroiderers were getting up and working their specialty on different pieces and some guy forgot that the lady who ordered the piece didn’t like the blue heads and had opted for the golden brown ones! Maybe it wasn’t discovered until the jacket was sewn together. Further circumstantial evidence that the workshop was full of similar pieces and embroiderers may have been moving around.

So we are stitching the left arm butterflies with the bright blue satin stitch as seen here!

Tricia

Tricia writes:

During the week Wendy and I worked on getting all the detached pieces traced and labeled for stitching. We had done a few weeks ago and Jill and a few other stitchers had been working on the detached pod layer for the pea pods. It is worked in Grene gilt sylke twist.

Since we had done the little peas – we HAD to add the detached layer on top! Here you see the layer that Jill worked after being liberated from the linen it had been prepared on. A few tacking stitches along the length and along the top using the ends of the thread that was still attached was all it took to secure the piece. Now we have peek-a-boo pea pods! There were squeals of delight from everywhere. So
cute!

Tricia

Tricia wrote this post for us:

Today we excitedly added peas to one of the pods that are on the jacket to make the instruction sheets. The bottom of the pod is stitched in silk detached buttonhole and then two gold spider web peas are added on top. Here you can see me practicing the spider web pea in a corner to try to get the right size. With the spider web stitch using a thick thread, you need to make the legs really long to end up with a smaller circle. I had to try it a couple of times to get the right size. The peas looked really, really bright on the silk. We had alot of squealing in the room as passersby saw the peas. Very cute.

We had a question from a curator the other day as to why we were stitching the gold last and not first. Apparently there is an unfinished piece in their collection that has only gold on it. Having not seen the piece, I can’t comment on that piece. I can comment on this jacket and why we are working in that order, along with many other pieces I have viewed. There are several clues that lead us to the ‘gold last’ argument. First, the leaves and peas all have gold worked directly on top of the silk. Second, almost every vine end or calyx (as in the foxglove or peas) overlaps the silk work, showing that it had been done last. Another point from experience – filament silk catches on raised gold stitches so much that it becomes impossible to work. And we have already shown that much of the silk worked on the original was hand twisted filament in a medium – loose twist, which would have caught on the gold plaited braid as each buttonhole was worked. Just wanted to document our thinking process for those who may have wondered.

Tricia

blog as documentation helps us, too, when we later try to reconstruct the decision-making process jmh

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

After hearing your concerns and consulting some colleagues whose opinion I value, I have decided to change the date of The Embroiderers’ Story Symposium. Please mark your calendars for 24 – 27 September, 2009. This is the weekend after we originally chose. I sincerely apologize for the perceived slight, I certainly meant no offense. Of course it’s true that no date will be convenient for everyone so I apologize in advance to those for whom this weekend is worse. But, at an institution where we place a high value on inclusion and cultural sensitivity, it only made sense that we make every effort to fix the mistake. Embarrassing, but the right thing to do.

There has been so much spontaneous good will and genuine community generated by this project that it would have been terrible to mar its culmination by any ill feeling. Fortunately the teachers and speakers who had already committed were amenable to the date change (and very gracious about the whole thing), and we were able to secure the necessary rooms and theater at Plimoth Plantation. Due to the visitation patterns, we may be a little more crowded this weekend, but we should be able to manage.

Now, though, I need your help with spreading the word about the correct date everywhere, to minimize the inevitable confusion. If you sent notes to your guild, or your needlework-loving friends, or to a yahoo group, please send the new date along.

I’m working hard on firming up the arrangements, and I anticipate that by the end of September I should be able to give you a ballpark on the registration fee and start accepting “save my spot” deposits.

MD wrote to me suggesting that we devise a way for participants to network carpooling and room sharing, and it seems to me that the forum for this blog is the right place for that. After we start accepting deposits, I’ll ask Robbin to start us a thread for each topic and people can find each other there.

To answer Robbin’s question, there will Not be plaited braid stitch instructions in the needle-gold thread kit, so go ahead and order Linda’s from Calico Crossroads. There’s a link in the upper right portion of the blog home page. Go to her searchable catalog and look for plaited braid stitch. That should bring up the $6 + shipping packet of full-color instructions. If you have any trouble you can email Linda through the contact page on her website.

Thanks for the note about the comment box being overrun by text. Unfortunately we’re between Webmanagers right now; I sent Rich a note about it on his last day. I don’t think he laughed, but only because he’s not that kind of person. He did say that issue was already on the list for the interim guy to work on, but I have a feeling the interim guy had a lot more on the list….cross your fingers that another talented webmanager wants to work here and we find him/her soon.

Here are two tantalizing pictures of the excellent stuff Penny, Emily, Lacey, and two volunteers from the Landmark program did here on Tuesday and Wednesday. I know Pen, Emily, and Lacey want to blog about the whole experience, so I hopefully won’t be treading on their toes by posting these two. The first is their cushy setup outside the Crafts Center. Chairs! And a tent! It looks comfy, but it was scorching hot those two days.

The second is some yarn gently simmering in madder, I think.

They all had an excellent time, worked really hard but said it didn’t feel like work; the visitors loved it, the other Crafts Center artisans loved it, and Penny’s so pleased she’s already talking about doing it again in September. That much makes it a ringing success. But they also got loads of gorgeous yarn out of the deal, and that’s just gravy. They all three looked really tired on Thursday, though.