I need to take a small break from my description of the weaving going on at Eaton Hill Textile Works for the jacket and let you know about a important change regarding the symposium.

We have been hearing from many of you asking about early registration for the symposium that was being planned for September 2009 around the project.  I am disappointed to have to let you all know that the economic conditions we are all experiencing have resulted in the need to delay the symposium and have us look at alternative time frames and plans for a revealing of the project and gathering to go over the results.  Unfortunately as we are working on those options at the moment, I don’t have definitive news to give you and we had been waiting to notify the speakers first.

As we have been receiving daily emails wanting to register – I know many of you were excited to come to Plimoth.  We too are disappointed that funding and the economy have made the need for such changes.  As soon as we have a better picture of the plans, we will post them here.

Here you can see Kate and Justin at the hand loom where the 17.5 inch wide silk is being woven.  Lovely view too of the Green Mountains of Vermont in the background. Very calming to be in the workshop.  Kate told me that the loom was 19th century and there is even an older loom in the workshop – 18th century!  Justin is holding the shuttle he had just re-spooled on a spinning wheel to show me more of the process.  I was amazed to watch him re-spool, he said he has to be very careful to form the cone of thread on the spindle (I think) so it will pull off just right.  There is no going back and rewinding.

Justin has been working on weaving the silk for the lining for weeks at Eaton Hill Textile Works. They started last year indigo dying the warp silk threads and setting up the loom. Before I go into the current progress, a few words about Eaton Hill Textile Works.  They are a small textile mill in the Green Mountains of Vermont specializing in 18th and 19th century weaving techniques.  Kate Smith both weaves custom fabrics for reproductions and period rooms and teaches a wide range of hand weaving and dying techniques.  If you have ever been interested in learning about weaving, you couldn’t find a more interesting spot to work in.  And in the tradition of all those who love handwork, the food is great also! I was served a rare treat when I visited this week – plum pudding.  YUM.

I wanted to let you see some of the fantastic fabrics that Kate has produced in her workshop, along with the range of naturally dyed fibers hanging in the workshop.  Just scrumptious!

In an effort to continue to expand our database of existing jackets, I went looking at a few sites again to see if new photos had been posted.  The interest in this project and the book under development by Susan North (woman’s fashions of the period) has resulted in more of the photos being added to collection databases.  A few to note are:

• A waistcoat at the Art Institute of Chicago in a very simple coiling vine pattern without flower motifs.
• A waistcoat at the V&A which is full of red slip type motifs arranged in a diamond pattern and worked in wool.
• An informal jacket at the V&A worked in a highly stylized and symmetrical pattern on silk.
• A waistcoat at the V&A worked in drawn thread and pulled thread with silver oes as an embellishment.

I hope you enjoy the eye-candy for the New Year!  Wonderful to see the variety in the jackets and the techniques used.

Tricia