Here is a photo of the back of the jacket, taken last Friday, April 18.

This is the piece Tricia took home with her before our inaugural embroidery session last June. She had to work one of each motif, taking detailed photos of the steps in order to produce that fantastic instruction manual. That’s why she chose this piece, it has the biggest unbroken section of the master pattern. So for a while this piece had the most done on it, but since then the other parts have more or less caught up.

Before that first session she did instructions for several motifs, plenty to get us started, but only the plain silk ones; at the time we didn’t have any GST, it was still only a good idea, remember? CAN you remember before GST? She’s been adding motifs since then, first the ones that used only bisse, redde and carnation as those were the first three colors we got. Since then she’s been keeping ahead of what the embroiderers are doing, adding a new motif pretty much for every new session. Want to join us in May and see what new flower we’ll have?

At some point pretty early on Tricia started to work the bird in the middle of the back and then stopped because she thought there was a lot going on there and wanted some detailed pictures. I just got an email from her the other day, saying she’d been examining some of those detailed pictures and it seems there’s gold AND silver threads in the bird, and did we want to do that? It would mean tarnish eventually, not to mention sourcing the silver and the expense. Of course I said no. Why go to the trouble? The gold will be plenty.

I’M JUST KIDDING. Absolutely we’ll have silver too. We don’t know what “over the top” means.

Here’s the other half of the jacket’s left sleeve. You can see the concave curve at the top which goes under the armpit.

And a detail of foxgloves, showing the “speckling” which is done, as Kimberly mentioned, in running stitch. I agree, the GST doesn’t show up well in a still photo. It shows to best advantage when you move the frame slightly, letting the light, especially sunlight, play over it. Which makes sense, when you think of it being used on clothing, so the best effect is when the wearer moves and light, in that case probably candlelight or lamplight, plays over the surface, not only of the GST but also the sequins, the gold vines and the metal lace with the dangling spangles. Oh.

And here’s a motif photo, this is columbine. We’ve got a few columbines with just this blue bit in the middle done, Tricia has been working on directions for the rest, determining which stitches are used where. On more than one occasion we’ve found there was more going on with a motif than at first appeared, like when Tricia and Susan North found at least four different variations in how the pansy motifs were worked.

Norma answered Carol’s question as to why the trefoils are “dreaded”. There are just so very many of them, and with the three leaves and the color changes they take a long time to do. That, and though no one has said so out loud they’re also done in plain silk, not the glamorous Gilt Sylke Twist. Poor trefoils.

Tricia is checking on how the acorn caps were made in that 17th-century raised-work picture. I’ll ask her to check her notes for the other elements, too, and she’ll give us a post with the answers.

We’ve added a couple of embroiderers for tomorrow. I’m delighted – the more the merrier, not to mention the more progress, but we may be a little cozy here in the Wardrobe office. Shaina and Penny have turned their excellent spatial-relations skills to how to arrange the room most efficiently, so we’ll be in good shape. I’ll remember to take photos.

I haven’t blogged three out of the last four nights because I simply can’t think of anything to say. Nothing new has happened since about 10 days ago when Carolyn and Robbin worked on the real lace. I’ve been taking this project one bite at a time for over a year (remember the old joke about how to eat an elephant? One bite at a time…) and right now there just isn’t another bite on the fork.

Don’t mistake me – there’s plenty left to do. More silk embroidery (more trefoils!) more GST embroidery, more lace (WAY more lace!). And there are more things to figure out – how to manage the gold work, how to marshall the legions who’d like to sew on sequins, and don’t even mention the whole putting-it-together part (no, really, DON’T mention it!). And then when it’s finally done, there’ll be the creating an exhibit to go with it.

But right now, this week, no decisions or choices are in the offing. We’ve got an embroidery session starting on Friday, the first one with embroiderers AND lace makers working at the same time. That’ll be exciting. And hopefully some of them will bring some show & tell that I can then share with you. But right now…..

So, if you have any wonderments, anything you wish I’d explain, anything I explained so long ago you don’t remember where we’re coming from, anything at all, let me know.

To make up for assigning you the blog for the next couple of days, I’ll leave you with a picture. This is a detail of a gorgeous 17th century raised-work embroidery which belongs to Joanna Hill, a textile conservator and friend of Tricia’s. Joanna so kindly brought this embroidery to a couple of sessions last summer and let us all get really close to it and take lots of pictures. It’s the only real 17th century artifact I can actually post pictures of here. I love that the bird has a bug in its beak. Ewww.

On February 29, our intern Alex worked on the jacket for the first time. Here are her hands stitching a peapod.

At that session we also had another new embroiderer, Myrna. Melanie Anne decided that the state of Maine was under-represented among the embroidery corps, so she persuaded her friend to come down with her. Myrna is pretty new to this type of embroidery so she practiced for the morning and then worked reverse chain outlines.

The last picture for today is of Melanie Anne stitching a thistle top in Gilt Sylke Twist bisse.

The office was a little beehive today, with five volunteers joining us. The hand sewing on three shirts was finished plus part of a fourth was done; a great deal of stab-stitching on a pair of breeches and a cassock was also accomplished. Meredith spent part of her birthday volunteering; we wish her many happy returns of the day. I got a phone lesson from Rich on managing the new forum, and Robbin volunteered to help moderate, which offer I immediately and gratefully accepted. Welcome to everyone who signed up, and if you haven’t checked it out yet, please go see.

Tricia has some exciting news:

Other than a few spools that Access Commodities has given out to shops and designers to promote the up-coming release of Gilt Sylke Twist, Thistle Threads bought the entire manufacturing runs made for the jacket, knowing that not all of the thread would be needed for the jacket. Part of horse trading. We have calculated the needs of the jacket based on our stitching use so far and used what was needed for the Nightcap class. We have extra!

The extra was first offered for sale two weeks ago to those stitchers who had already attended a session as a thank you for generously giving of their time and effort to the project. We still have some extra of five colors – but not copious quantities.

Several of these colors are limited edition, to be replaced in the next set of manufacturing runs by a permanent color series. The blues and pink will not be the same going forward. So if you have a large project in mind, you might want to wait. From last contact with Bill, there may be some thread coming over in the next six weeks. He is currently on travel again and was trying to get one or two colors to Access before he left but wasn’t sure that was going to be possible.

If you are interested in any of the Gilt Sylke Twist and can’t wait until later to get your hands on some, please email Tricia at tricia@alum.mit.edu with your request. The available colors are: Redde, Carnacion, Bisse, Graie Blewe, and Grene. The price is $25 for a 35 meter tube with $5 of each tube going to Plimoth as a donation to the jacket project.

Tricia

Please note: These photos show all the colors, some of which are not available for sale right now.

I got up this morning and found that my inbox was very, very full! I hadn’t had my caffeine yet and so it took a minute to register that Susan North (Curator at V&A) had been generous with her time and photographed motifs that I was having difficulty figuring out stitch direction and other details. Thank you Susan! What a treat and so valuable.

I bring this up as I saw something that was very interesting. On many of the motifs there were dark areas where it looked as if a silver thread had been used to make one small stitch. When magnified, I laughed. It was where the Gilt Sylke Twist (the real 17th century version!) had broken the metal wrap and it had piled up on itself as the stitch was made. In their case, they had used a very thin silver strip (visit our December blogs to see why we used a gilt wire) and so it looked like a pile-up of silver. So I guess the professional didn’t waste his (her??) time taking out those areas to fix them as we have been doing. Hmmm, maybe we can pick up some speed here!

I love these little details – seeing the same mistakes that we make really means we are on the right track. I am happy that we waited for these pictures to start motifs such as the bird, as I saw details in the tails that we didn’t pick up from earlier photos. Now I have to change the directions for them as there are more stitches used in the tail than we could earlier discern.

Tricia

I included the photo of Tricia’s first embroidery with the Gilt Sylke Twist. On the lower right corner you can see where the wire snapped and piled up. In an earlier comment, Tricia mentioned she hadn’t noticed the snag until she got much further along, but now the new information makes it look like a more exact recreation of the original. Gotta love that.
Jill