Sometimes we all come by some book and decide to buy it and later think that you may have been crazy to have done it. Years ago I bought a modern copy of The Besler Florilegium, which was originally published in 1613. It is huge and used to hold my computer up. But I have used it many times on this project to look up the flowers on the project to help confirm that it is what we think it is or some
detail. It came in handy last night on the borage.

When we made the pattern for the embroidery, we traced the existing embroidery and the borage looked like there were just two rows of black in the center. We worked it yesterday as we can see it on the piece. But the placement of the pistils just didn’t look right to me. As I was working on the instructions for the books, I pasted in pictures of the original and noted that some of the borages had a few more rows. Hmmmm, I thought. Might the center have been filled entirely with black and did it degrade over time? I have been working on another project with a blackwork nightcap and have been studying where the black threads cleave from the surface of the linen and so the pattern I was seeing on this borage made sense that there may have been more. Hence looking up of the borage in the Besler Florilegium. It isn’t a flower I am familiar with and I wanted to see how a period interpretation of the flower looked. As you can see here, the center is a cone of ivory and black framed by the pistils. There was the answer, our borage is a funny projection and I needed to go back and add more black trellis stitches immediately! Here you see our new ‘finished borage’. Much better.

Tricia

I like that term, when Jill said it the other day to describe what we were doing it gave me all the validation I needed to go buy myself an Indiana Jones hat and bring a whip to the next session!

What she really meant was that we were listing all the means we could imagine to get the results we were seeing from the photographs of a particular detail on the jacket and then trying all of them on the side to see what results we got and comparing them to the original. It often takes more than one person to do this as you feed off each other to come up with various options that the embroiderer of the past may have tried.

The details in question were the veins on the leaves. Since a portion of the embroidery pattern was traced from the Embroiderers’ Guild (UK) piece, we had their veins on our linen. But as comes up constantly on this project, you can see the forest but don’t notice the grass until you need to walk through it! The veins on the EG piece all have a main vein and all the nice off-shoots. We noted that the veins on the jacket in the V&A collection only have the main vein. Disappointing at first, until you realize that we have to do about a hundred or more of them. As we looked at them, we were confused. I have to admit that my ‘forest view’ had told me that they would be couched down and so I had carefully selected a couching thread the night before and brought it with me.

They didn’t seemed couched, in fact they looked like two twisted gold threads. But how was it secured? Options were a) can’t see couched thread, b) it is one long stitch that is wrapped on itself after coming back up through the fabric, c) the gold is used to couch itself, or d) a loop of gold is twisted and held down at the tip. In the next two photos, you can see all these options worked except that with a couching thread made of silk. We discounted that option until all others failed. These embroiderers were going for speed, remember.

If you want to see the original, there is a nice close-up on the V&A website that shows these veins. You can compare to our work and see if you agree. In the end, the easiest method worked the best and looks just like the original. We come up at the base of the leaf and down near the tip. Go back up again near the needle hole and wrap the laid gold thread three-four times and back in at the base of the leaf. Very fast.

Tricia

If you want to see the close-up on the V&A website, remember you have to go from the V&A main page to the “collections” page, and use THAT search function – the “search the collections” one; NOT the search box that appears on the upper right corner of the main page. Once you have the search-the-collections box, put in 1359-1900 to see the embroidery pattern jacket. jmh

One of the interesting things about the original jacket is the mistakes or variances we keep finding on the piece. One of the most intriguing is the butterfly heads. All of the heads on the jacket are done in a golden brown tone using trellis stitch, EXCEPT the ones on the outer left sleeve. These are all done in a bright blue satin stitch. For easily a month I assumed that it was the result of either bad conservation or an addition at a much later date. That was until I looked closely at the photograph of the piece at the Embroiderer’s Guild collection which was worked in the same workshop with the same pattern. Low and behold, the worm heads on that piece were all in bright blue satin stitch!

I imagine that the workshop was full of pieces underway – a few jackets, a coif, some panels, and others. Embroiderers were getting up and working their specialty on different pieces and some guy forgot that the lady who ordered the piece didn’t like the blue heads and had opted for the golden brown ones! Maybe it wasn’t discovered until the jacket was sewn together. Further circumstantial evidence that the workshop was full of similar pieces and embroiderers may have been moving around.

So we are stitching the left arm butterflies with the bright blue satin stitch as seen here!

Tricia

Tricia writes:

During the week Wendy and I worked on getting all the detached pieces traced and labeled for stitching. We had done a few weeks ago and Jill and a few other stitchers had been working on the detached pod layer for the pea pods. It is worked in Grene gilt sylke twist.

Since we had done the little peas – we HAD to add the detached layer on top! Here you see the layer that Jill worked after being liberated from the linen it had been prepared on. A few tacking stitches along the length and along the top using the ends of the thread that was still attached was all it took to secure the piece. Now we have peek-a-boo pea pods! There were squeals of delight from everywhere. So
cute!

Tricia

Tricia wrote this post for us:

Today we excitedly added peas to one of the pods that are on the jacket to make the instruction sheets. The bottom of the pod is stitched in silk detached buttonhole and then two gold spider web peas are added on top. Here you can see me practicing the spider web pea in a corner to try to get the right size. With the spider web stitch using a thick thread, you need to make the legs really long to end up with a smaller circle. I had to try it a couple of times to get the right size. The peas looked really, really bright on the silk. We had alot of squealing in the room as passersby saw the peas. Very cute.

We had a question from a curator the other day as to why we were stitching the gold last and not first. Apparently there is an unfinished piece in their collection that has only gold on it. Having not seen the piece, I can’t comment on that piece. I can comment on this jacket and why we are working in that order, along with many other pieces I have viewed. There are several clues that lead us to the ‘gold last’ argument. First, the leaves and peas all have gold worked directly on top of the silk. Second, almost every vine end or calyx (as in the foxglove or peas) overlaps the silk work, showing that it had been done last. Another point from experience – filament silk catches on raised gold stitches so much that it becomes impossible to work. And we have already shown that much of the silk worked on the original was hand twisted filament in a medium – loose twist, which would have caught on the gold plaited braid as each buttonhole was worked. Just wanted to document our thinking process for those who may have wondered.

Tricia

blog as documentation helps us, too, when we later try to reconstruct the decision-making process jmh

Wendy stitched this borage as the model. She sent me a photo, labeling it “borage – done”. Which of course it is not. I’m trying to be careful about that now. Borage needs some black and white in the middle, and then the little spiky leaves done too.

But this is the big part, and for the next session (officially 8-11 August, but any time the week of the 4th can work as Tricia will be here working on GOLD) we’ll have borage directions. This is good, because in the master pattern borage is the only motif that repeats.

It’s a three-across, four-down repeat, and borage appears in the middle of the top row and at the left end of the bottom row (as Tricia drew it – it’s a repeat so theoretically you could start anywhere and repeat outward). So twice as many borages, sort of. Lots of opportunity to use the spectacular dark blue gilt sylke twist. See you soon?

To address the questions in the comments about comparing the lace gold thread to the embroidery gold thread, and how the embroidery gold thread is made, and the needles, and that, we’ll have to wait till Tricia comes back from vacation and can let us know. I’d say maybe towards the end of next week? I know she’ll get us the information as soon as she can.

I think there will be plenty of goldwork to do aside from the coiling vines, too. I was thinking, the tops of the foxgloves and pea pods are gold. The vine has many curliques (which it may be should be worked as you come to them, but maybe they’re separate, I don’t know) which will be gold. Most of the leaves have gold veins. The rose, strawberry flower, pansy and honeysuckle all have gold centers. The straight lines that stick out of the columbine and honeysuckle blossoms might be gold. (No, I don’t mentally catalog the work left to do, over and over. Why do you ask?) So we may well have goldwork available to those who either don’t want to or can’t match the established stitch density of the plaited braid. All of which to say, don’t worry, there’s plenty work to go around.

The other day I heard from some embroiderers who hadn’t sent in a sample or signed up to stitch because they were nervous about having their work “judged”. We’re really not using the samples to judge, or to keep anyone away. No one’s been refused. The samples let us take advantage of everyone’s strongest skill, and give Wendy and Tricia a starting point for helping to improve everyone’s stitching. Even those very experienced with this kind of embroidery have reported that after a few pointers and two days of practice, their work has improved and they go faster. Several have called the embroidery weekends a kind of ‘master class’, with individual attention (Wendy & Tricia usually have 20-25 students in a class and here we never have more than and lots of time to practice.

So don’t let that keep you away. Come stitch. This chance won’t be here much longer. I swear.

• We entered the dog days not long ago, and I can really feel it. The heat isn’t oppressive, but it is humid, the air quality is sub-par, and I’m suffering from embroidery craving. All I want to do is work on that right front piece, the one that’s less done than all the other pieces because it languished for months in an impossibly wide frame. It’s been re-framed and is marginally easier to work, and I want to stitch a columbine. And a pansy. And a few butterflies. Maybe some honeysuckle buds or a pink split by a gusset. But not the worms. I bear them a grudge for not being what I thought they were. Bah.
• Gilt Sylke Twist is noisy. It’s thinner than the soie perlee, but because of the gold wire wrapping it’s almost ribbed. The first time I pulled it through the linen I gasped at the noise. The more experienced stitchers in the room chuckled, oh, yes, it IS noisy. After you work with it a while you forget, mesmerized by its beauty.
• Thanks for the note about the symposium, Cate. We’ll be holding all the events at Plimoth, and the capacity is about 200. Which seems like not a lot unless you’re actually planning it and still aren’t sure if anyone will come. Then it seems like quite a lot indeed. Those dates are 24-27 September, 2009.
• Lacey’s experience with the hot dog buns rang a bell for lots of transplanted New Englanders who miss the familiar buns of their youth. Isn’t it funny what you miss? Years and years ago I spent a year in England and missed Oreos. Like crazy. When I can have them any time I almost never do. And yes, I’m sure while there I saw The Jacket at the V&A, but alas I had no idea how important it would become in my life and so wasted the chance to really SEE it.
• Who doesn’t want to come to Plymouth in August? Carolyn W has a free weekend and will be coming to make lace 22 – 24 August (Fri – Sun) so we decided to make a party of it and invite everyone. Have a few days? Want to come to the sea? Actually, by that time it usually isn’t so hot and humid anymore. And, at least we won’t have to worry about having to cancel for snow, like last winter. email me jhall@plimoth.org
• The credit for the plaited braid stitch illustrations in Plimoth’s embroidered coif kit belongs to Oliver Kline and Joanna Kline Cadorette. I heard from Joanna that she drew the initial sketches and her father cleaned them up on the computer and made them all nice and easy to understand. Thank you, Mr. Kline.

Thanks, Rosemary, for catching my error in the dates for the August session. The formal session is 8 August to 11 August, a Friday to Monday weekend. However, Tricia is planning to be at Plimoth all week, from Monday 4 August to Friday 8 August (that’s what I was thinking of, I think) working on the gold. Anyone is welcome to come work for a day or more that week, running into the weekend session or not. Please let me know what you’d like to do so we can plan accordingly jhall@plimoth.org

Sunday Astrida was planning to leave about 3:00 pm to get home to New Hampshire in time for her husband to participate in one of his favorite hobbies. She stayed late to finish a rose; here she is pleased and proud, and a little tired too, with still a 2-3 hour drive ahead of her. She left around 5, I think, but not before Mr Astrida called wondering was she almost home? Not so much. We thank him for his patience and understanding – that rose couldn’t wait.

And here’s JoAnn, working furiously away to finish her last motif before leaving. Here are Wendy and Linda encouraging her work, and here’s JoAnn, also looking pleased and a little tired. JoAnn stitched a pink, a motif that’s taking most stitchers between 7 – 10 hours to do. It was the last big motif on this piece that we have directions for (we’re waiting for marching orders on the borage, the bird & the fancy worms) and the big blank space there was really bugging Wendy for the last couple of weekends. Must get that pink done. And JoAnn did! There is one pink left on the jacket, a “split” one that’s divided by the line where one of the gussets will go.