When Justin left me the silk lining, I was musing about how much fun I had visiting when the silk was on the loom and trying it out.  Justin then announced that you could certainly see where I had worked. Oh NO I screamed!  Yup – I was beating the shed so hard trying to keep from leaving a really loose weave that my section was extra tight.  He unrolled the silk and there it was – a 1/8″ stripe across the fabric.  I am sure Jill will be able to cut around it in the end when she lays down the pattern pieces.

Who knew weavers have ‘hands’ too!

Tricia

I was hit in the head by a virtual skein of yarn the other day after a post.  (See comments on Stitching Gauge, January 29th)  I welcome discourse as it allows us to debate points.  The commentator was pointing out the close personal relationship that could have developed between two professionals working together at a frame due to conversations (more commonly known to us in the trade as “stitch n’ bitch) and that this had resulted in distress when the relationship ended.  I had chalked up the distress at loosing a partner to more technical issues of getting the work done ala work style.

I thought it would be interesting to all to talk about ‘talk’ at the frame in the workshop as I had just had a very interesting conversation about this very subject just a week ago with a colleague.  There are a few professional workshops that I am aware of their rules and practices.  One is the Japanese workshop (Kurenai-Kai) and the spin-out teaching workrooms in the USA.  In the workroom, quiet behavior is of the essence.  In fact, if the master needs to show you something, he does not tell you but instead sits down at your station and starts embroidering. You are supposed to watch intently and deduce what he wants to show you.  For those of us western embroiderers, this is the most difficult part of learning this embroidery.  As I progressed through the levels, I began to really enjoy going to Japanese embroidery as it was one of the most calm and contemplative parts of my hectic life.  Total quiet except for the specific break times.  I also got allot done in class.

At the Bard Symposium, I met a colleague from the Royal School of Embroidery.  We were talking about our workrooms for the jacket and for their private commissions.  I was shocked to learn that the workroom procedure (in place for over 100 years and only modified in the last decade) was for total silence among the embroiderers.  Indeed, if a break was taken by an embroiderer, her absence is noted and that stitching time must be made up.  My colleague was noting other strict guidelines and how some of them had been relaxed a bit in the last ten years.

I laugh because our workroom is staffed by volunteers (including myself and Wendy) who have given up time and money to be there.  For those of us volunteers who are there every session – out goal is quality and reducing the number of sessions which take us away from our families by making progress.  Of course, we understand that for the other volunteers, this is also a social gathering where there is lively discourse on the history of embroidery, technique, interesting collaborations and of course more than a few funny stories.  But we have found a SIGNIFICANT correlation to progress versus talk.  In fact, those who talk allot make the least progress and those who are silently listening sometimes make as much as 3-4 times the progress.  I therefore totally understand how the paid workshop has a ban on socializing in the workroom.

I will admit that sometimes if it gets bad and my husband screams again about having to take care of the kids while I am monitoring the workshop, I have a CD turned on in the room the next day to discourage conversation and to pick up pace!  Now you know our secret.

Tricia

We are doing a bunch of needed tasks as we are experiencing our lull in embroidery effort.  All of them are much needed and too long in coming.  I hope to get to re-lacing the slate frames soon.  Many of them have had their lacing threads break over time and they all need a good strong thread again.  One of the things I have been working on is getting together a comprehensive list of the data and ‘collateral’ we have generated and putting it all in one spot.  Karen, the Head of Collections at Plimoth is helping me with this task and will assign numbers to them so we can track them for the future.  When you are working feverishly from session to session you don’t realize how spread all the ’stuff’ gets.  I laugh because soon those two pencils I shaved down with my husband’s wood plane and taped together to allow us to draw the coiling vines with have some important museum number attached to it.

Also, interacting with the rest of the museum community has made me realize how important it is to get our documentation done and in order so we don’t loose anything that scholars will want in the future.  We have cutting patterns, muslins, sample books, time sheets, photographs (galore!), video, spangle waste, articles, tools, etc that all might be useful for the future.

We have started to enter the raw stitcher data into our databases and have been trying to make sure we have the correct lists of people who stitched, laced, contributed, and made samples.  I will be posting some of these lists periodically to have you all help me make sure there are no omissions – when we are working fast – things do slip through the fingers.

On that note, we realize that many of the stitchers or visitors have taken photos of the progress and general workroom shots.  In the interest of having one major collection of photos to use in the future exhibit and for scholars to review, we would greatly appreciate it if those who would wish to share their photos would burn us a CD of them.  To make it easier for us to use them in the future, could you place the photos in a folder with the date taken and place your name and address on the CD itself for photographer credit.  In the future, we might need to contact you for permission to use the photos in publication on the rare chance.   If you have a CD to send, email me at tricia@alum.mit.edu to get the address to send it to and so we know to monitor the mail!

Tricia

Some interesting things about the woven silk that I noted when I was visiting Eaton Hill Textile Works are shown in these pictures.  First, I kept seeing these pins with silk wrapped around it.  This is where the warp threads had broken, both ends are wrapped around the pin.  After the weave is done, these ends will be darned into the fabric and cut off.

You can also see the warp here – it was dyed with indigo last year and warped.  When it is on the beam, it looks indigo but when the warp spreads out during weaving you can see stripes show up where the individual warps have faded.  Kate thinks that the scouring of the silk might now have been done well enough for the dye to take. Because of this, the weft wasn’t dyed and is being woven with white.  When the entire piece is done, they will re-dye the fabric with indigo.

Tricia

It is my goal on this project to try as many of the techniques as possible so I can describe it on the blog, in lectures or in an eventual book.  So I gathered up my hutzpah to ask Justin and Kate if I could ‘drive’ the loom.  They were very gracious and helped me in the steps.  Open the shed, grab the shuttle, throw it through (and CATCH), beat it and start again.

As you can see in the pictures – I found this to be much harder than I thought!  It is like chewing gum and rubbing your head while hopping on one foot.  Opening the shed by pushing on the foot petals took strength as I am shorter than Justin.  But the hardest part was throwing the shuttle.  I thought it would fly out the other end and I would have trouble catching it.  NOT a worry!  The shuttle kept getting stuck between the two layers and I would have to stick my fingers in between the warp to scoot it along. Justin made it look so easy and fast.  You can see me looking close after beating down the weft to see if the weave was tight enough there.  I don’t want that ‘defect in the weave’ to be because of me!

You can see the wonderful length of woven silk at the bottom take up – he estimated it to be between 1.5-2 yards at that point.  I can only take credit for maybe three or four passes – not even an 1/8″ of it!  Working on the sequence, it was really physically demanding and I can’t imagine doing a piece of fabric that is wider.  You need some wingspan for that!

Tricia

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.

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