I thought you might like to see the left front and how close to being finished this
piece is.  Impressive is all I can say about it.  There are areas where the spangles
are now being filled in between the embroidery.  We had some extra visitors on
Friday to help us.  Actually, they came to talk about a possible visit by their
organization to the project.  But since we are all about inclusion and getting this
project done, we sat them down with needle and thread and had them start to
embroider on the pieces, adding spangles (also called paillettes or oes).

A few weeks ago we were going to have some close photos taken of the motifs and
so needed to add our first spangles with multiple stitchers.  So we were faced with
the question – where and how many per inch.  With spangles, its not a question of
too little or too many, but the number per inch.  We wouldn’t want to have one part
of the jacket have a much higher density of spangles than another.  So to make
sure that didn’t happen, we took the master pattern repeat and drew red dots in all
the places that we wanted spangles.  That is to be used as a guide to sew them on.

During the latest session we had made enough progress on the plaited braid that
we could do some calculations.  Because the gold thread was made specially for
the project,  we needed to know if there was enough to finish the project or if
another round of thread would need to be made.

So we went around on Friday and counted gold coils that needed to be finished
and those that were done.  The count was 62 done and 155 needing work.  We
counted the jacket pieces along with the coif and forehead cloth.  Then on to the
spools of gold thread.  We have been careful to use a spool fully before opening
another spool and keeping the empties all together, just for this purpose.  So we
had 16 spools that were empty and another 48 left that were full.

Putting on the math hat, we were 28% done with the plaited braid coils.  Wow.  That
made us feel good!  The gold coils are obviously the part of the project that we
have stressed about the most.  I am happy to report that all that hand ringing was
for nothing.  I have been surprised by how fast the stitchers have become very
competent at the plaited braid and how the hand is not easy to identify.  One added
bonus that we will be able to see soon is what types of variations we see in the
hands and therefore go back and review existing embroideries to see if we can see
the subtle differences and therefore the number of professionals.

But back to the numbers, we have 28% of the coils done with 25% of the spools.
Phew.  We still have extras to do, the tendrils and centers of flowers.  But I have a
small stash of nine spools from the manufacturing run in reserve and so we think
we are ok.  Now I hear all you out there who want this thread.  I will do
my darnest to try to get some more made – but at least we don’t fear running out of
thread on the project.

The progress per spool was validation of our thread estimation methodology.  If you
look back in the blog, you will see how we counted coils, measured a few and then
came up with the number of meters of a coils to work.  Then worked an inch of
plaited braid and measured how much thread we used.  The estimate is holding
pretty well.

Now how did they do it in the 17th century?

A few months ago, staff from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Bard Graduate School of the Decorative Arts came to visit the project and film the stitchers, lace makers and spangle maker.  The product of that film footage will be part of the exhibit ‘Twixt Art and Nature‘ opening in the Bard Graduate School on December 11th.  The exhibit will also showcase a spectacular jacket which was studied as part of the preparation work for this project.  I highly recommend the exhibit if you are in the NYC area.  You will be able to see a real jacket and also footage of our project along with some discussion about the relationship between these objects.

The exhibit website can be found here. For some eye-candy, here is a glove I brought for show and tell the other day.  This is a project for the public program at the exhibit on December 12th.  It uses several threads developed for the jacket project or those that were developed as an offshoot of the relationships developed during the project.

Tricia