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

This is a photo of the Sunday, September 28, 2008 volunteer embroidery crew. They are holding out of service frames.

That’s what I said when I saw this photo. (I was off yesterday, so I found this about 9:30 last night.)

So that’s Cheryl on the left in the back, holding the frame with the collar and cuff pieces. The cuffs are done except for gold (and all the stuff that comes after the gold, like sewing on the detached pieces and the round sequins), and the collar is completely done. Next to the right is Sharon, Sharon the Trefoil Queen from last winter. Sharon has some of the gussets over her shoulder (they’re all done but gold, and gave up their frame a while ago to make another piece more manageable). She’s holding the left front, all done but gold.

Next to the right is Debbie, holding the frame with the rest of the gussets and the upper right sleeve, both only waiting for gold and what comes after. Behind her is Deb. Deb came out from Kansas last winter with Catherine, who is in the back next to Deb. In the winter they brought us chocolates and a coffee maker; this time they brought a huge box of chocolate treats and their friend Sandye, who is standing in front of Catherine holding the forehead cloth. Deb is holding a sleeve which is all done but gold, Catherine is holding the right front on which right now as I type Sandye is stitching the very last worm. When she’s done that piece will be all done but gold.

The forehead cloth has only 1 1/2 borage and 1 1/2 pansies left to do. The coif has a bit more. Both the coif and the forehead cloth were put aside during the sessions when we had more jacket pieces than stitchers. It doesn’t matter, in fact it would be good, if the coif & forehead cloth weren’t done at the same time as the jacket, then we can have embroidery demonstrations as part of the exhibit. So we’re very not worried about that. (Secretly I’m a little pleased – my day job has prevented my doing as much as I’d like on the jacket so now I have a little more chance to shirk my real work and play embroidery.)

Next to the right of Sandye is Carli, holding the back. There are a couple of worms and a couple of leaves still to do on the back, but they amount to maybe a day or two of work, and Carli is still working as I write.

Next to Carli, in the back, is Joanna, holding one of the sleeve pieces and Norma, next to her, is holding another. Joanna worked here in the Colonial Wardrobe Department in the early 1990s, and designed the embroidered coif kit with that great instruction booklet that is so beloved by embroiderers. I was very glad Joanna was able to join us. She, Norma and Cheryl mostly worked on detached pieces this weekend. Norma stitched thirteen detached butterfly wings. Wow. They finished all the detached pieces except two that Tricia wants to do personally, and a couple for the coif & forehead cloth.

Jennifer has been here this weekend but isn’t in the photo; she was felled by a migraine on Sunday, probably because of the plunging barometric pressure from Hurricane Kyle which was charging towards Maine (Jennifer’s home) and dumping rain on us over the weekend.

And that’s Wendy in front, of course. On Saturday, after Melinda left, Wendy clapped her hands and said,”OK. Company’s gone, out comes the whip.”

What does this mean? Well, we have a few odds & ends of embroidery, but not enough to schedule a  session. Local embroiderers may still come a day here or there to work on things, and of course there is lace to make. I’ll have three lace makers here for a weekend in November. We’ve got the beginnings of a gold plan. As we get the coiling vines done on each piece, it will go back into service for the little gold bits, the sewing-on of the detached pieces and the sequins. So if you’ve been wanting to come work on this project, don’t despair, there is more to do. I will of course make any new session announcements here.

Thank you to everyone who has come to embroider or make lace, who has bought an embroidery kit or lace kit, who has excitedly told a friend or neighbor about what’s going on over at Plimoth, who has read this blog, who has left a comment …. we couldn’t have come this far without each and every one of you. That sounds rather final, doesn’t it? It isn’t. This is a milepost only. I’ll still be posting almost every day. Keep visiting this week as I share with you all the magnificent needlework treasures from the latest show & tell.

We’ve got a lot going on this weekend (OK, how many times have you heard me say that?). But we really do.

Aside from working with us, and her several day jobs, Tricia has also been working with the Metropolitan Museum in NY on a exhibition of 16th-17th century embroidery which will open in December of this year.

This exhibition will include a video of some of our volunteer embroiderers and lace makers actually doing some of this kind of embroidery. So in addition to the 11 embroiderers and one lace maker working in the office today, we also have Melinda, assistant curator at the MET, and Han, videographer from Bard College filming and asking questions and doing all sorts of things – including, in Melinda’s case, a curlique of the gold embroidery.

Penny caught her at work, and there is Tricia in the background photographing her contribution. I, of course, forgot my camera at home.

My camera was hiding in the trunk. It came out as soon as I wasn’t looking for it anymore, and I got these pictures. The first is of Mary D, who came up from Virginia to work on the lace this weekend. She set herself a goal of 6 repeats/day, and was well ahead of that by Sunday afternoon. Her hands moved so quickly the photo is blurred.

It was a treat to me to have some quiet time to chat with Mary; bobbin lace as a technique doesn’t really call to me (fortunately, my fiber room is bursting with supplies and tools) but it was fascinating to hear about how she came to learn to make lace, and how she enjoys the puzzle and challenge of working complex patterns with many pairs of bobbins. I asked her if this lace, simple as it is and with very few bobbins, comparatively, is boring. Fortunately the answer was no, because working with the metal threads presented its own challenges.

Here are two pictures from my visit to the New England Lace Group on Saturday. I thoroughly enjoyed the day, and was pleased to find I knew more people than I thought I was going to – Bryce, Jill H and Carolyn W have all been to work on the Plimoth lace, plus there was Carolyn H who had invited me, and Mary came for the meeting, and also Elisabeth whom I’d met a few years ago at a Weavers’ Guild of Boston meeting. They all, old friends and new, gave me such a warm welcome, and were so admiring of the work. I feel funny, always in the position to accept all the praise for the project – I’m officially passing it on to all of you, who really deserve it!

Catherine, Laura and Jen joined us for last weekend’s embroidery session. All of them have been here before and so are considered “veterans.” They certainly showed their experience; they all accomplished a great deal.

Catherine was working on the unwieldy back piece, and stitched three complete roses along with a few odds & ends here and there. Laura mostly worked on the collar & cuffs frame, finishing the cuffs to the point that they are ready for goldwork. She also stitched the detached butterfly wing piece, and then sewed it to the collar, which made the collar done-done-done.

Jen was working on an equally unwieldy front, and did some of everything, including fancy worms. Fancy worms are composed of two parallel rows of ceylon stitch, in two different colors, with the head stitched separately in a third color but also in ceylon stitch. These worms also get black back stitched antennae (thus making them not technically worms, I know) but are not wrapped like the plain worms.

Here are all of them with their frames. They were friends from before this project, and traveled here together sort of like a girls’ weekend away. They have such fun together, it makes the atmosphere of the weekend sort of like a party. A few different times we’ve had friends meet here both to enjoy each other’s company and to work together on the project. It puts me in mind of all the different sorts of women’s gatherings to work and talk, like quilting bees or houseraisings (OK, there the men are working I guess but if you don’t think it’s a lot of work to feed timberframers, I’d like to introduce you to a couple of cooks I know…..)

Please note! I am cancelling the October 24-27 session.

Great progress is being made this weekend on the silk embroidery. We have 10 embroiderers scheduled for September 26-29. I anticipate that after that weekend we won’t have enough silk and GST embroidery left to make a full weekend session worth while.

There is still plenty to do – we’re just on hold for the moment. Tricia is going to examine the birds during a trip to the UK next month (green, green, green with envy) so we’re holding off on those for now. The gold coils need to be done before any other gold, and the coils have to be a unified hand, however we’re going to manage that.

After the gold coils, we’ll be calling for volunteers to come again, to do lots of gold – the centers of pansies, roses, strawberry flowers and honeysuckles, the peas, the tops of pea pods and foxglove, the stamens of honeysuckle and columbine. And I’m probably forgetting something. Plus there will be the thousands of ‘oes’, and the sewing-on of the detached pieces. And I haven’t even mentioned the lace.

When I saw the finished collar, I remarked to Tricia that there were more oes than I’d imagined. She wryly agreed, noting that she had double-checked the density on the original jacket and there are indeed more oes per square inch than we were thinking. So. Don’t despair, there’s more to do and we still need lots of help. Just not in October.

This is bittersweet, for me, at least. It feels great to be approaching another milestone, but I will miss the gatherings of embroiderers. You all are great company, and talented too.

As of September 12, 2008, here is the collar piece. You’ll notice it has both gold work and sequins, necessitating the use of shades just to look at it.

I’m pretty sure Tricia is going to blog about this piece, and I don’t want to scoop her so I won’t say any more – but this picture really is worth a thousand words.