We get COMMENTS! WHOO! I loves comments, yes I does.

Carolyn H wrote: Jill, Plimoth is so lucky to have this offer from Carol. (I think so too!) I think you’ll be so pleased at the durability of stockings knit from combed long wool. Some years ago I knit a pair of socks for my husband. He put a hole in the heel within a few months (I had used woolen spun Cheviot wool). I subseqeuntly combed some Cotswold long wool, and he has been wearing those socks for over ten years!! This is one of the wonderful things about this blog — chances to read and learn about all aspects of textiles at Plimoth! Thank you.

Thank me? Pfffft. Thank you. I love writing about stuff I love to write about.

Margaret wrote:
In your wildest dreams, did you ever imagine how exciting and interesting this blog would be? I feel humble and proud to have worked on the jacket and toured your costume studio last August. I can hardly wait to see what you do next.

It’s good to hear from you, Margaret. You should be proud, you do lovely work. This project seems to be inspiring a lot of humility and gratitude, though; I feel that every time I get to welcome generous talented embroiderers and lace makers to work on it, and even when I just get to talk about it. And, no, I had no wild blogging dreams, only nightmares where no one came.

Carol from the UK wrote with a technical question:

“two strands S spun and double plied Z”

Is this just another way of saying 2-ply or is this a different technique? I really appreciate all the information you are sharing with us. Yes, I already know a few of the things you write about but I am learning more all the time, and I thank you for it.

This has been an incredible journey, even for those like me who can only watch from the side lines.And before I even had a chance to see this, Kat had written in with the answer:

I’m so flattered that Jill put this up! (I maybe should have warned Kat that everything gets in the blog. Inquiring minds, you know.) I love to spin and this is just such a fun thing to do.

To clarify the “two strands, S spun, and double-plied Z” directions — wool that is S spun was spun on a wheel moving in the clockwise direction (clockwise from where the spinner sits). Wool that is Z spun is spun in a counterclockwise direction. To ply, you want to go in the opposite direction from how the strands were spun. If you ply in the same direction as the spin, you will get a really hard yarn!

The direction also has to do (historically, anyway) with the type of yarn being made. S spun for woolens; Z spun for worsteds. I always think of it in terms of: Woolen — carded — S spun/Worsted — combed — Z spun. Distinguishing between carding and combing is also a tip as to the breeds of wool being spun.

It would be interesting to see if silk responds differently to S or Z spin. An archaeologist friend sent me an article where a colleague of his proved that flax naturally spins in one direction, and hemp in the other. She was able to use the cordage impressions in pottery shards to determine what the clay had been wrapped with, which absolutely blows me away!

Kat, inquiring minds will also want the citation for the article, would you send it please, when you have a chance? Thanks.

And Melanie Anne connected the dots for us:

Ah, another instance of S and Z. In embroidery, we see the S and Z as the differentiation between the Stem Stitch and the Outline Stitch. Depending on the direction you make your stitch it creates a twisted border that makes an “S” or a “Z”. I can never remember which is which, but I believe the “S”tem stitch makes the S and the Outline stitch makes the Z. In practice, most people interchange them without differentiation- but technically there is a difference. This of course, is completely different than just using a stitch to outline something… but I digress… Now that I realize that yarn also has a directional “twist”…. does silk spinning also vary with the directional S & Z?

Yes, I believe that anything you spin, whatever fiber it is, fine like silk or coarse like rope, can either have a right-leaning or left-leaning twist, usually described as S/Z, or clockwise/counterclockwise. I remember seeing an article by Deb Pulliam in Piecework? Spin-Off? one of those magazines about spinning Z and plying S for crochet; that the natural motions of the crochet stitches tended to un-spin “usual” S-spun Z-plied yarn.

I was asked for some information on kinds of cloth available in the early 17^th century. This information is going to the interpreters who portray the Plymouth colonists in the 1627 English Village and on Mayflower II. As I was putting it together, I thought it might be interesting to you, too.

Kinds of linen cloth available in the early 17^th century.

Unless noted, the following information comes from The Great ReClothing of Rural England: Petty Chapmen and their Wares in the Seventeenth Century, Margaret Spufford. PLDL = Plain Dealing Linnen-Draper, published in 1696 and quoted in Spufford’s book. The Plain Dealing Linnen-Draper listed different types of linen and cotton cloth and described the common uses for each. *Please note that the PDLD, while a wealth of information, was not published until 70 years after the date represented in the 1627 English Village. [12 p (pence) = 1 s (shilling); 20s = 1Ł]

This is not an exhaustive list.

Holland: sheets for better people; shirts/shifts. This was fine, bleached linen. I believe the white linen the Colonial Wardrobe Department uses for shirts and smocks is similar to Holland.

1628 – the probate inventory of John Uttinge, chapman, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, lists Holland at 18p, 20p, 21p and 22p. PDLD recommends Holland yard-wide for shirts & shifts for most; ell*-wide for the same for large women; ½ ell-wide for children.

Cambric/lawn. This is fine bleached linen, usually used for collars and cuffs.

1605 In one of the dialogues in The French Garden cambric is offered for sale at 20s/ell and is bargained down to 16s/ell.

Canvas – thick and heavy. Could be made of linen (product of flax plant) or hemp (whose Latin name, cannabis, is the origin for the name of this cloth). In 1636 a kind of yellow canvas made in England was used by the overseers of the poor to make sheets for a deserving man. In 1696 the PDLD said canvas would last 11-12 years in constant wear.

Linsey-woolsey – sometimes called a “union cloth” because it is a union of 2 different fibers. The warp is linen, the weft, wool.

Osenbridge/osnabrucks – from Germany, PDLD recommends it for shirts and sheets for the humble, and says that 3 breadths make a sheet which would last more than 6 years. Coarse grey osenbridge sold for 6-8p/yard.

Fustian – linen warp with cotton weft, another union cloth. This fabric was brushed or rowed to raise the nap, and then either singed to burn off the fuzz, leaving a smooth cloth, or shorn (cut) to trim the nap. Uttinge’s 1628 inventory listed fustian at 14p/yard; white cut fustian at 13 or 14p/yard; black & white cut at 12p/yard.

Callico – cotton, most likely plain, originally imported from Calcutta (hence the name). Uttinge’s inventory lists it at 11p or 15p/yard.

Diaper – linen woven in an all-over diamond pattern; can be fine or coarse, used for table linens (tablecloths, napkins, towels). There is precious little information about 17^th-century hygiene, including what was used for diapering babies. It seems that in the early 17^th century, old, worn-out linen was used for baby diapers (nappies) as described in the following rare quote:

“Dear father, . . . that you will speak to my lady to send me some clouts (cloths) and I shall think myself much bound to her for she promised me some when I was with child of my first but I was so well provided that I thought to reserve them till I had need of them, which is now, for I have had so many children that they have worn through all my things and therefore I must try my friends again for I trust that you have some old shirts in a corner for me or some old things . . .”

Lettice Gawdy to her father, Sir Robert Knowles, in Weston.

Quoted in Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England: A Sourcebook edited by Patricia Crawford & Laura Gowing, London: Routledge, 1999, pp101-2.

The above letter is undated, but the writer was dead by 1630. She sounds overwhelmed.

According to the PDLD a cloth called Hamburg sleasy diaper which was selling for 7p/yard was highly regarded for softness and therefore used for baby diapers. Spufford has a footnote to this information: “Dr. Margeret Pelling, of the Wellcome Unit of the History of Medicine, tells me that very little indeed is known about this subject, and that there also seems to be a gap in the 17^th-century secondary literature.”

Mary Ring’s 1633 inventory lists a diaper tablecloth at 5s. (Mary Ring arrived in Plymouth County in 1629.)

*In the early 17^th century in England an ell = 45”. A Flemish ell was only ¾ of an English yard (therefore 27”). This was confusing to contemporaries, too.

“An undated note written by an anxious clerk in the office of the Great Wardrobe during the early years of Elizabeth I’s reign makes this very plain:

‘Memorandum that every Flemish ell is iij quarters of a yarde sterling, so that iiij elles Flemyshe is iij yards sterling, then viij [elles] makith vj yards …’” and it goes on and on, the poor confused thing. This is quoted at length in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion: The cut and construction of clothes for men and women c.1560-1620, p.124.

Samples from Sharon H and Lauren S arrived today.

Tricia’s writing tonight:

You may have seen some of our earlier hand-wringing over the linen and if it would get here in time for the first session. Well, we managed to get a piece that was 1.9 yards long while we were waiting for our original order of 7 yards. We had been really worried that in the transfer of such a large and complicated pattern, we would make many mistakes. This process of cutting the fabric for tracing became an enormous word problem. It went something like this:If you have 1.9 yards of fabric of one dye lot that matches no other fabric, how big can you cut the pieces to fit the only 11 slate frames located on earth (insert 22 sets of frame piece sizes here)? Note that there are 16 pattern pieces to fit in the frames and each has some random grain direction you must follow. But be sure to end up with some leftover pieces big enough to use if you screw up the inking. Now what time did the train reach the station? Please state the answer in millimeters.

Well, the answer wasn’t obvious. Finally, I cut up pieces of freezer paper to the estimated sizes needed to fit the pattern pieces in the frames. Laid out on the fabric, I was able to nest them to optimize the fabric cut. Phew. I could mess up the transfer on three large pieces and still have fabric of the right dye lot to make a new transfer.

The cutting of the linen proceeded and the freezer paper had an unintended use. I realized that when I ink quilt fabric for autographs, I always iron freezer paper to the back to keep the fabric nice and stiff for inking. So that should work with the linen too! It was the best idea ever for the pattern transfer! If you have ever tried to transfer a pattern to linen before, you will know that the pencil, wax, or ink nib always makes the linen shift. By applying it to freezer paper, the pattern could still be seen through but it was almost like writing on paper.

Since I don’t have a light table that is as big as the pattern pieces, I improvised one. I had a piece of clear Plexiglas cut to 24″ x 36″ and laid it over my existing light box. This allowed me to tape the pattern onto it and then the linen-freezer paper on top of that. The entire piece of linen was taped down around the edges. When I needed light near the ends, I shifted the Plexiglas over the light.

Tracing proceeded using an archival Pigma Pen in black with a 0.01 nib. It took forever. About 16 hours total. But amazingly – no mistake – but lots of hand cramps.

Tricia

Hey, it’s JUNE. The month in which we’ll begin the real, actual embroidery. I’m excited.

Today we changed the room we’ll be stitching in for the June session. I have to say; never in my wildest dreams for this project did I imagine we’d have to deal with what to do with too many people. I had scary visions in which NO ONE wanted to work on the jacket. I had scary visions in which we couldn’t find appropriate materials. I had scary visions of the whole thing taking way too long. But never did I dream we’d have more embroiderers than we could fit.

So we decided to move from the medium-sized room in the Visitors’ Center that has pretty good light to a much bigger room in a building across the path. This building, called Accomack, has plenty of space with lots of windows, but the lighting in the center of the room is not great. We thought buying lamps would be easier than being crammed into a too-small room. This reminds me; if you’re accustomed to working with a magnifier, please bring it along. And the chairs are wooden, so if you think you’d like a cushion, please bring one.

Kathy is also sticking pins in me about the schedule for the session. I’m working on it, and so far can say for certain that we’ll be checking in Tuesday the 19^th beginning at 9:30 am in Plimoth Plantation’s Henry Hornblower II Visitors’ Center. We’ll begin stitching at 10:30 am in Accomack. We’ll end this session on Friday afternoon at 4:00 pm so those with a long drive can get started early. I have promised Kathy that I’ll send a proper, detailed schedule to the June participants before Monday morning. I will of course also post it here.

So speaking of the scary visions of not finding appropriate materials, the lovely new linen is still languishing in customs, but we no longer care. Tricia pretty much cornered the market on any of this linen already in the US and came up with one piece large enough to make the entire jacket. We really wanted to avoid cutting from two separate pieces because of concerns about differences in dye lot. After a lot of fiddling and figuring and planning and plotting, Tricia was able to make the largest piece work.

Next step is tracing the pattern shapes onto the linen, and then tracing the embroidery pattern on. All of which she’s going to take pictures of so we can share. Meanwhile, I’ll be making canvas cases in which to store & transport the frames, once the linen is mounted on them.

One last thing, some folks have had trouble finding Kathy’s contact info, so here it is again:

Kathy Roncarati, 508-746-1622 X 8114 or kroncarati@plimoth.org

And here’s mine: Jill M. Hall, 508-746-1622 X 8119 or jhall@plimoth.org