Update from the Day Job:

Penny’s been working on this pair of hand-sewn stays for the past many weeks. Working off and on, and having to do some alterations on the fit, but she’s really been plugging away at them for a lot longer than she wanted to be, you know?

And now they’re done! Hooray!

And here’s Arianna, our autumn intern, who is off to a fantastic start. Here she’s working on the last bits of a new lightweight waistcoat for one of our new interpreters, Vicki, who will start on Saturday.

Arianna had just had a very successful second fitting, and now only has to sew on the wings, finish the sleeves, and do the buttons and buttonholes and it’ll be done!

I’m also making a waistcoat for Vicki, a wool one,  but have a lot more than that to do. I’m also almost done with a smock for Vicki, and have done an initial fitting of a wool waistcoat for Jenna, another new interpreter. Jenna’s actually already started on site, but will need this as quick as I can pull it together.

Then we’ve got one more new interpreter, Molly, who will be working with the Education Department presenting programs in local schools. The stock of clothing was so totally picked over by Jenna, Vicki, and everyone who came before that Molly needs quite a lot of sewing…tomorrow Penny will be remaking the waists of two petticoats so they’ll fit Molly properly, as well as altering the neck/shoulders of a second smock for Vicki.

Penny knitted another awesome hat, this one for Emily. The pink is yarn Emily dyed with cochineal, which are indeed little bugs. Penny duplicate-stitched a skull, because Emily has a pirate aura.

I suppose going back to school is an acceptable excuse for leaving us.

In the comments Meg asked about the small knitted bags several of the female interpreters wear suspended from a belt. In the early 17th century pockets in clothing weren’t as universal as they are now (although Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion 1560 - 1620 has several examples of extant items with either pockets sewn in or evidence that there used to be). People, men and women both, often carried a pouch or bag on their person to hold small items.

We base the bags used on our sites on one found on the Gunnister man, a late 17th-century body found in the mid-20th century in a peat bank in Scotland. The Gunnister man’s knitted possessions are described in Richard Rutt’s book A History of Hand Knitting, and also in an article by Deborah Pulliam that appeared in Piecework magazine.

About 20 years ago Plimoth Plantation, in conjunction with the Weavers’ Guild of Boston, published a booklet of knitting patterns, including one for this sort of little bag. The booklet is out of print, and most of the patterns have been vastly improved through further research in the intervening years. A few years ago a former wardrobe department tailor developed a pattern for a bag the same size as the Gunnister man’s but with a different pattern. I’ll find out if it is available through the museum gift shop and let you know.

Tomorrow is Emily’s last day with us. She did great work this summer, as did Lacey, who arrived home safely a few days ago. We’re going to miss them both, especially since we’re only in the middle of the process of finding a replacement for Shaina, who departed in June. This autumn will be a major transition time for us.

Kandy asked about the exhibit opening in May. I guess I have neglected to mention that much, since we won’t shift into high gear on the planning and implementation of that for another couple of months. We are planning to open an exhibit which will include the completed jacket in May of 2009. I will of course share the details as they develop.

I also have more pictures of Rebecca transforming into her 17th-century character - on a disk at the office.

Betty-Anne, Rosemary and Abigail all brought lovely show and tell objects to the last session. Wendy kindly photographed for me, as I had very cleverly “lost” my camera in the trunk of my car. We missed getting a snapshot of Rosemary’s gorgeous Victorian style beaded scissors case, with the beaded fringe and beaded neck cord.

Here is a photo of some of Betty-Anne’s doll beds. She has made eight or nine of them illustrating different historic styles of bed hangings. She brought these two to show.

And this is Abigail’s blackwork truly-a-sampler. She adds to it as she finds designs she wants to record, has used at least one (the double acorn on a garment) and in working another discovered she never wants to use it again. That’s just how samplers were used in the early 17th century.

And here is a picture of Lacey modeling her Plimoth souvenir hat and holding the coveted Janet Arnold book. Lacey dyed the yarn with madder and Penny knit it for her. Turns out the Virginia girl collects winter hats. I’ve been told it gets cold in Virginia. Mmm-hmm. (Lacey spent ten years in Germany, where it really does get cold. We just like to tease her.)

Lacey headed home about a week ago, and we all miss her very much. She’s promised to come back for the exhibit opening in May. This is Emily’s last week with us and today she’s fighting off a cold and valiantly soldiering on with the green canvas suit. She’s determined to finish it before she has to go home. I’m not liking the empty nest.

Our next embroidery session starts Friday August 22. We’ll have several embroiderers and a lacer or two. There’s still room if you have some time, come and join us.

Emily is guest-posting today.

As someone who takes great pleasure in all things weird and wonderful, I am extraordinarily pleased with my blue right thumbnail. That’s right. It’s blue. Navy on the edge, fading to a gentle sort of sunny lakeside-ish color in the middle.

I haven’t taken a nailbrush to it because I tend to be pretty lazy when it comes to general fingernail maintenance (although they all get a good weekly biting), but also because I’m not sure I want it to go away.

I’m not sure I want to go away.

This weekend (August 9^th -10^th ) is the weekend that the intern house bids farewell to two of its six occupants. My counterpart in the Wardrobe Department, Lacey, is one of the young ladies departing, and the whole department is sad to see her leave.

In the past few days, Ms. Lacey, with the help of Tricia, has been making a web of numbers she should call in order to find out what becoming a textile conservator would be like. In this line of work, I am told, a certain amount of chemistry is necessary. Lacey proved her aptitude for working with potentially volatile elements during our dye workshop (See Figure 1) and was pleased and proud to see her work come to fruition. She was fascinated and frustrated by the exactitude necessary to produce both the solution for the madder (See Figure 2) and the solution for the indigo (See Figure 3). You can see the beauty produced by her meticulousness was well worth her effort.

I was just psyched to put bugs in a coffee grinder.

Lacey handed me a little container of dead insects (cochineal bugs), and I crushed ‘em up and boiled ‘em, dumped the wool in, and when I took it out, it was a dashing, daring shade of red (See Figure 4), whereupon I did a little dance of joy.

Through those two days of wool dyeing, Penny (or “Big Grasshopper”) imparted her knowledge of natural dyestuffs upon us, making sure that we had a good handle on what we were doing and surreptitiously checking over our shoulders to keep us on the right track. She was very pleased by the end of the workshop, and it was very pleasing to see her, a fiber artist I love and respect, that pleased. And she brought us chocolate croissants when we were done, too, which was pretty bomb.

Lacey’s farewell gift from Penny was a little hat made out of some of Penny’s handspun yarn, which Lacey had dyed with madder during the workshop. If I were the kind of person who could knit more than a straight line (I make a mean scarf, but anything else? Forget about it), I would be all over this yarn. Seriously. And I’m not just saying that because my second job is in retail.

I’m just thankful that Penny let us make up a second indigo dyebath, exclusively for cotton. With characteristic precision, Lacey dipped and dipped her button-down shirt until it was a stunning shade of midnight blue. I went all art school and dumped my shirt in, relishing the air bubbles that made odd striations and pockets of color all over the garment. We both went into the indigo dyebath after our clothing (and skein upon skein of yarn) with bare hands, hence the blue fingernails.

It has been more than a week since we had our dye workshop, and I am still very happy with my subtly blue fingernails. I am less than happy about the fact that I will be returning to Bennington in three weeks, with a play to costume and a fashion show to complete. It was, however, brought to my attention that I should probably get my B.A. before I’m a contestant on Project Runway. Thus, it is with a brain laden with knowledge and a heart laden with sorrow that I leave the Plimoth Plantation Wardrobe Department. I will keep in touch and will hopefully be back to work on the jacket.

And I’m just going to let the blue in my fingernails work its way out.

~Emily