This post was written on Wednesday.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am with the boost in the arm that Judy, our weekend group, and now Kris Andrews is giving to this project. We have made tremendous progress on the goldwork and I think we might even get this project done some day!

Kris Andrews is stitching on the piece that Judy worked on for a week. She is also stitching here most of the week as she is staying with her mother who is local to me. Tomorrow she runs down to Plimoth for an important photo session with the piece she is working on. More about the results of that important photo session later.

Kris has been smokin’ hot in progress. Of course it is easy to look good when someone else warms up the piece for you! Another thing that has made me breathe a HUGE sigh of relief is how hard of a time I am
having to tell which of them did which coils. PHEW. But really, Kris is very fast and good.

Just look at how fantastic this piece is looking. Kris is diverting today and part of tomorrow from finishing the plaited braid and is doing the fiddly bits so some of the motifs can be ready for photos. I hope she gets the piece back for Friday and can complete the plaited braid parts. That would be amazing.

Tricia

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