And let Linda V from Arizona write tonight’s post. Linda came to Plymouth last summer to work on the jacket. She also offered to work at home on a project for us. She’s reproducing a red silk double-running stitch-embroidered handkerchief from the V & A (where else?) that we can use either in the upcoming exhibit or in some of our living history programs.

The first picture is the front, with a dime for scale. The second is the back. Linda wrote:

It’s an interesting project and I’m enjoying working on it. At 55 count it’s a new experience for me to have to use magnification to do the job! It is a slow go however. What you see in the photos is roughly 30 hours of work. About 10 hours of work per flower/repeat. I’m going forward, but it will not be a quick project.

Lyn from Canada taught Linda a nifty technique for anchoring the thread without a knot. Linda writes: Nan Euler’s Surface Anchoring method is working well. It is a little challenging to do it at this scale, but I love that you hardly see the beginning or ending of the threads.

Elmsley Rose did a whole blog entry about the S and Z twist that we’ve been talking about. Check it out HERE.

Last time I mentioned that the embroidered handkerchief is being used as a gift in the courtship story in the 1627 English Village. An inquisitive reader (thanks, Amy) asked who would have done the embroidery?

It is very unlikely that much, if any, embroidery was being carried out in Plymouth Colony’s early years. The business of growing, preserving and preparing food occupied a great deal of time. The fact that there was not yet a grist mill for grinding grain into meal meant that hours upon hours of labor were spent grinding grain in a mortar and pestle. Even though at least some of the women living in Plymouth in 1627 must have known some embroidery, we don’t think they were spending any time on it, so the handkerchief must have been brought into the colony.

Like so much else, the specifics of courtship in 1620s New Plymouth were unrecorded. We know that Isaac Allerton traveled to England on the colony’s business in the summer of 1626, returning to Plymouth Colony in the spring of 1627. The written records allude to Allerton bringing items ‘on his own particular’ (or outside his capacity as the colony’s representative) to sell to his fellow colonists, but the record is annoyingly non-specific.

We also know, from inventories of itinerant peddlers, that small, relatively inexpensive embroidered items were available in England ready-made. We’re putting those two bits of information together and ‘interpreting’, or making a reasonable leap from known facts, that this handkerchief was one of the items Allerton brought back ‘on his particular’, and that the suitor purchased it from Allerton.

So who embroidered the handkerchief? It’s possible that professional workshops like those that produced the embroidered jackets also made smaller articles like handkerchiefs. It’s possible that independent embroiderers made items for sale. We know that the professionals in the workshops were mostly men; we don’t know if women embroidered for sale or how or if they were organized in any way. The records of the Embroiderers’ Guild were lost in the London Fire of 1666. What light they might have shed on all these questions we’ll never know. The good news, though, is that modern scholars are continually dredging deeper and deeper into the records that have come down to us. In future posts I’ll be describing some of the many books we’ve been reading as part of our research for this project.

Costume historian Susan Vincent in Clothing the Elite wrote that searching for information on the clothing of the past is like “looking for salt in the sea – the evidence is everywhere, and nowhere.” Sometimes bits of information come from very unlikely sources. If you know of obscure articles or books, or scraps of knowledge hiding in books about other topics, I’d be glad to learn of them. Perhaps through this project and blog we can enlarge the body of knowledge on this topic, to the good of all.

Thank you to everyone who has left such positive and encouraging comments on this blog. Thanks also to those who have told a friend about the project, or in any way have helped to spread the word. We’re really excited by the enthusiastic responses; and, OK, I’ll be honest - also a little relieved. There was this tiny little scrap of doubt about whether anyone else would be as excited about recreating this jacket as we are. What if we committed to this massive undertaking and nobody noticed? Fortunately, that is so not the case.

Update on the kits – for the last several weeks the beautiful linen has been held up in customs. We’ve been assured that the problem has been sorted out and it would be released today (cross your fingers). As soon as we get it we’ll assemble the kits and send them out. BUT we are getting very short of time to prepare for the PBS filming on June 21 & 22. When you order your kit, let Kathy know if you can come in June; those kits will go out first to give the embroiderers and us as much time as possible to stitch and organize the first teams. Don’t worry, though, the rest of the kits will be following as quickly as possible.

And if you can’t come to Plymouth for June, check your calendar for these dates:

Wednesday, August 8 – Friday, August 11

Thursday, September 13 – Sunday, September 16

Friday, October 19 – Sunday October 21

We’re open to suggestions for other dates as well. And, for local embroiderers, there is the opportunity to come more often for shorter amounts of time.

Here’s a picture for today. I don’t have the photography skills to really do it justice. This linen handkerchief was embroidered by Kate Moore, one of the many talented people at Plimoth Plantation. The double-running, or Holbein, stitch was done in red silk. Kate also made and applied the gold thread bobbin lace. How lovely is this? It is being used in a courtship and betrothal story in the 1627 English Village. The suitor, Experience Mitchell, presents it to his beloved, Jane Cooke, one of several little presents they exchange. She receives this hanky rather frequently, since for each day’s visitors the story and the hanky are new. This courtship will culminate in a betrothal (or engagement) ceremony – coincidently on June 20^th – so if you come to embroider you can see it in person.