We have to thank Judy Laning for her week of Indentured Servitude to the Jacket (or Waistcoat). We have given her a ‘certificate’ as the human who has worked the most plaited braid to my knowledge. Well, that title will last until at least Friday when the next Indentured Servant might upstage her. We will let you know on that.

Judy did beautiful work. She is looking a bit tired in this photo as it was about 11pm and we had handed out a bunch of candy and the house was buzzing with little kids with costumes on. Judy worked through the whole Halloween thing and had driven back from Plimoth where we had gotten a group working for the long weekend on plaited braid, handing down our experience from the week. We learned a lot from plowing through a bunch of plaited braid. Some of which I will have to do some detailed blogs on next week. We noted an important maneuver that allowed us to pick up incredible speed in working the stitch and gave me new insights on these gold stitches. Let me take a series of photos to try to illustrate this for you. When you work only a few inches for a sampler here and there – you never get proficient enough to make statements and conclusions.

I also learned an important thing. The indentured servant will go crazy after three straight days of working on plaited braid from 8am – 11pm. We took a mental health break on Thursday at lunch to see a bunch of samplers at Skinner that were being auctioned off. That was enough and then back to work!

Tricia

really IS gold, in this case.

The gold thread for the coiling vines is real gold, and, like the gilt sylke twist, was purpose-made for this project by Bill Barnes of Golden Threads in the UK. It is a gold wire wrapped around two ends of yellow silk thread. I know the next question is whether any is available for sale, and the answer is, maybe. Right now we’re tracking how much thread it takes to embroider the coils and counting spools of thread. If there’s any left over, it will certainly be made available. If there isn’t, and there is huge demand, well, look what happened with the GST. Every time I check, new colors have been added to the line, and two sessions ago there was great excitement when Tricia brought out spools for sale. Not one person around the table said “I want this color”, or “I’d like to have this one”; it was all “I need this one. And this one. And … this one.”

So.

This past weekend’s experiment was exceedingly successful. Judy, who worked mostly at Tricia’s last week, arrived on Friday not babbling incoherently from too much gold work. She was still smiling and stitching and enjoying. Lyn J from Canada, Debbie A and Carli D from the NYC area all stepped up to the guinea pig table and took instruction from Tricia before practicing, comparing, and practicing some more.

Debbie reported that the gold is Not a pain to work with, in fact it is quite durable. She used one length for practice and was able to pick out mistakes several times and reuse the same length without trouble. The end you have to thread through the needle frays a bit, but Wendy reports that if you chew on it a little you can shape it up to re-thread.

Even after four days of coiling vine after coiling vine, Lyn, Carli and Debbie were still enjoying the work. I asked them if it seemed to take forever, because just watching them, to me, it seemed to go much more quickly than I’d thought (feared). They said that in the working it seemed to go slowly, but whenever they sat back to look, more was done than they expected, and less time expired. Lyn claimed to be Princess Slow-poke, but she accomplished several coils and none of the rest of us thought she was going slowly. I think she’s just accustomed to working more quickly than most and so this felt slow.

Here are pictures of Debbie and Carli’s pieces. Lyn was working well past the final bell on Monday, and Wendy didn’t remember to photograph her piece before we put it away. We will take a photo to post on Thursday, when we’re taking some studio photos of individual motifs. I think Carli was working on the right front and Debbie on the back.

Do you want to work some of the coiling vines? Our test group did so well we’re going to do it again. If you’re free the weekend of 11/21-24 (this is the weekend BEFORE Thanksgiving – I offered to run a session over Thanksgiving, pointing out that Pen and I will be here anyway, but got no takers), either have practiced the plaited braid according to Leon Conrad’s instructions as amplified and illustrated by Linda Connors, and are willing to work on matching gauge and stitch density, send me a note jhall@plimoth.org We can take 3-4 people to work vines, and a couple more to work silk or GST on the coif & forehead cloth.

We are “pushing” the jacket to completion this winter, in time for display at the beginning of May. I am worried about the winter weather too, look at last year! but look for more sessions in January and February. If you want to suggest dates, send me a note.

In addition to the gold workers, we had three lace makers this weekend. Sue, Linda and Colleen nearly finished the last short piece – the second cuff, as well as the long piece. Colleen also managed to do some embroidery on the coif. There are two new plans afoot – to develop some patterns for white lace to adorn the smocks, coifs, cuffs, and collars of certain characters on our living history sites, and to develop a smaller spangled lace suitable for trimming the coif and forehead cloth. If you’re a lacer and weren’t interested in working metal but might want to do some white lace, let me know and I’ll keep you apprised of progress.

I don’t have much news on the symposium, mostly because I’ve been focusing on getting the interpreters what they need to finish the season. I have a couple of firm commitments from speakers, one probable yes, and I have to get back to the couple I haven’t heard from; the biggest news is that the registration will open first to those who have worked on the piece. They’ll get a 5-week headstart to register and then we will open the registration to everyone. We plan to start this in December, and of course news will appear here and in an email blast to the stitchers/lacers. SO please update your contact information. I know there are some who have changed email/moved etc since coming. If you know someone in that situation, please ask him/her to contact us in order to stay informed. You can update by sending me or Kathy an email or calling 508-746-1622 X 8248 (Penny), X 8119 (me), or X 8114 (Kathy).

As we have moved into the gold work phase of this project we must sometimes evaluate our methods of getting work done.  We had been working with an apprentice system which has served us well.  But now with the vast amounts of plaited braid in front of us, we need to consider learning more from the past.

I propose a new means – Indentured Servitude to the almighty PLAITED BRAID.  Yes, I am joking.  I think that after two full days of working this monster stitch from 8 am to 11 pm, Judy was getting a little punchy last night.  She quipped to her husband on the phone that she was now an indentured servant to the jacket.  We giggled at what an ad would look like for this.

Judy has been embroidering at my house instead of the work room. Sometimes I bring a frame home to work on the instructions and since I had offered her a room for the week if she would stitch solid, it made more sense to have her work here while I worked beside her.  It saves about 3 hours of driving to Plimoth a day and I can make her work even later!  Thus an Indentured Servant!

Of course, working in my house has its perks.  Such as food, water, a couch and DVDs.  But it has some major detractions.  They are called the “Heathens” and these little children like to get up at 5:30 am and have more energy than comes from an atomic bomb.  Hard to sleep through the little tornados.

Hopefully Judy will get a nice night of sleep once she returns home. But for now she is making amazing progress on the plaited braid.  I’m thrilled.

Tricia

Melinda is working on the narration for the video of our project for her exhibit. She asked, how many hours of embroidery have been done so far?

In the fine old tradition of passing the buck, I asked Arianna to go through the heap of time sheets from over a year’s worth of embroidery sessions. She patiently, and painstakingly, combed each one, totaling the minutes, figuring hours, totaling hours, checking, double checking, walking away for coffee ….

After a couple of days, she gave me a little yellow post-it with the total so far -

2183.5

Very nearly 2200 hundred hours. This is, as Tricia says, “time spent moving the needle”. This isn’t shopping, or chatting, or even practicing on the doodle cloth. This includes time spent on the coif and forehead cloth, but not Tricia’s hours or some of Wendy’s, so it probably all evens out. Of course we still have the gold and sequins to go, so the final, grand total may top our original estimate, but we’ll continue to keep good records so we’ll be able to report back.

I’m amazed and humbly grateful. Thank you all so much for your dedication to this project.

Because a number like that deserves some eye candy to go with it, here’s a photo of show & tells waiting their turn. I love this; it’s such a heap of riches, of time and skill and precious needleworked beauty and usefulness. Included here are items by Sandye, Jennifer, Sharon and Catherine.

Tricia sent this to me this morning:

I am up early this morning preparing for my trip to see the jacket in the UK and took a quick look at the blog to see Jill’s latest entry. It made me very happy and again validated the enormous amount of work this project has required.

We have been tallying the hours put into this project to help the Melinda Watt understand the labor that may have been used during the original construction. 1200 hours of productive embroidery time up to June 1. We embroidered allot since then. That only counts the minutes that the needles were actually moving. Most likely another 1200 hours of time the stitchers were there preparing, reading instructions, etc.

Then there are the staff hours. Countless at this point – setting up, organizing, feeding us, blogging. And working their normal load these two years to boot! And the hours that Wendy has spent supervising the workshop so I might be home on the weekend to be with my children. About 600 or more easily.

My hours. Jill and the volunteer coordinator have been on me to give them that tally. Pattern drafting, searching the world for supplies, re-engineering and testing threads, writing the instructions, embroidering, lecturing…we figure now about 1000 + hours over the project.

The blog this morning just reinforces the reward. The informal nature of the workshop set up has consistently provided opportunities for people to try and learn skills they would never have tried before.
Bobbin lace isn’t something you come upon easily and it is a skill with a barrier of cost and availability of instruction to overcome.

But by having the pillow there, it is easy to invite a person to sit for a few minutes and make the moves that Carolyn tells you to make. Then it is instantly demystified and the siren of the bobbin has caught you.

We laugh in the workroom when visitors (there are massive numbers of them) come in to look. There is a buzz on the plantation when we are working and people just show up. If you linger too long, the needle
is passed to your hand. Many people have been waylaid to put a few stitches in. If they resist – we give them a doodle cloth and show them. Sometimes we end up with that visitor staying for an hour stitching on the cloth. One set of visitors from our first session were converted and have become regular stitchers, traveling from the south to work with us over and over again. And if you are an intern, well expect that you will learn as part of your job.

Lilia is shown in her volunteer costume just in for a few minutes on break. She had to do something on the jacket, she has been our weekend helper for the project.

We are looking at the future of our handcrafts in this picture.

That is our reward.

Tricia