A few weeks ago I spent some time trying to figure out how many hands had worked on the jacket at the MET.  I could clearly see that there were several – but how to prove to others that there were different people.  I realized that we have the types of evidence we need on the jacket to answer this question or at least start to provide a framework for others to use.  I when I returned, I started taking pictures of all the same flowers on the Left Front of our jacket.  Here are the borages from this piece.  I am not going to tell you today how many people worked these borages.  I will let you look at the pictures and come up with your own conclusions.  But we have signatures on the master pattern for each piece.

Sometimes as we progress on the project and these ‘questions’ come up – I am sooo glad that we decided early on that more data was better than less.  The kind of analysis that all this data allows is really exciting.

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.