All of the scheduled sessions are full or nearly so. I have sent an email with the schedule to all the embroiderers I’m expecting in August. If you didn’t receive a personal email with the August schedule, it means I don’t know you want to come. Please get in touch right away. jhall@plimoth.org By the end of the week I’ll be sending out confirmations for the September & October sessions. If you’re signed up for any session and you can’t make it after all, please let me know as soon as possible; perhaps another embroiderer can take your place. And yes, we’ll shortly be scheduling sessions for 2008 (2008!).

Carol left this question in the comments:

So do you have any idea what they meant by mingled?
Was it one color in the warp and another in the weft?
Woven from threads that were space dyed?

I have one idea what may have been meant by mingled, but there certainly could be other explanations. Gervase Markham’s 1615 book The English Housewife outlined all the skills a woman needed to run a large manor house, including “cookery, banqueting-stuff, distillation, perfumes, wool, hemp, flax, dairies, brewing, baking, and all other things belonging to a household.” This volume is a wealth of information for modern historians.

In the textiles chapter, Markham explains how, after the wool is dyed but before it is spun, the housewife should mix her colors together. He says that “the best medley” is composed of two parts dark color wool and one part light color wool. He explains that all the wool should be thoroughly carded “till you see it perfectly and undistinctly mixed together, and that indeed it is become one entire colour of divers without spots.”

The blended wool is then spun and woven into cloth. Perhaps the resulting fabric was called mingled color, like in the inventory. Markham doesn’t say.

In the 17^th century a kind of silk cloth with one color warp and a different color weft was called “changeable taffeta”; it is still made in the 21^st century. It seems to change color as the cloth moves. It’s possible that mingled color meant this kind of cloth, though, or something entirely different.

Thanks for asking Carol, and please if you have any wonderings, leave questions in the comments or email me at jhall@plimoth.org. Sometimes I don’t know what would be interesting to write about and I welcome your suggestions.

Wow. The days are really flying by right now. I didn’t realize I missed four days posting. Thank you to the two readers who commented on the red petticoat post; red certainly was an extremely desirable and expensive color to dye, and it is very likely those facts contributed to the higher value assigned to the red petticoat. I have read A Perfect Red by Amy Butler Greenfield, and can second the recommendation; it’s a fascinating read.

The second embroidery session begins in just over a week. Here is our schedule, developed based on the experiences of the first session and with the feedback of those embroiderers (also known as ‘guinea pigs’).

Wednesday, August 8

9:00 meet at Plimoth Plantation in the Accomack meeting room

short point to perfection stitching instruction, then stitching until 1:00

1:00 – 2:00 lunch, with a presentation by Kathleen Curtin, author of Giving Thanks, a history and cookbook of Thanksgiving foods

2:00 – 6:00 stitching

6:00 supper, followed by a class with a special embroidery project from Tokens & Trifles

Thursday, August 9

9:00 – 1:00 stitching

1:00 – 2:00 lunch

2:00 – 5:00 stitching

5:00 – 6:00 show & tell – please bring some special projects or antique embroideries you’d like to share. Last session seeing each other’s treasures was a special treat I hadn’t foreseen

after dinner behind-the-scenes tour of the Colonial Wardrobe & Textiles department

Friday, August 10

9:00 – 1:00 stitching

1:00 – 2:00 lunch

2:00 – 5:00 stitching OR see the museum and shopping OR early departure to aid travel plans

Based on what we learned last time, this time we’re not going to have set breaks but instead we’ll have coffee & snacks available both morning and afternoon and individual stitchers will please take a break when it suits their rhythm and work. I’ve lengthened the stitching sessions based on feedback from the first bee, but I’m aware that everyone has their own threshold for stitching. If you hit the wall at 3:30, don’t keep going. Please take that opportunity to shop or see the museum exhibits, or other attractions in Plymouth. We’re going to try to keep the workroom for working during the stitching hours, though, so we’ll move the socializing out onto the deck during those times. Also based on feedback from last time we’ll be having music playing during the working sessions.

The next session is September 13-16. We still have a couple of spots left, so if you’re available, please let me know at jhall@plimoth.org.

Sample arrived today from Marilyn S.

I’d like to hold two small embroidery sessions, one in November, and one in December. By small I mean 5-6 stitchers, the number we can accommodate in the Wardrobe Department rather than in one of the function/meeting rooms. In November all the meeting rooms will be booked. Things get a little busy around Plymouth in November, for some reason … and December I’m thinking not many people will be available to come, what with the holidays.

So the new dates are:

Wednesday, November 14 to Saturday, November 17 and

Tuesday, December 11 to Friday, December 14

I used the feedback from the participants in the first embroidery bee when choosing these dates. Most felt that weekdays were better than weekends, and most felt that four days would be better than three, particularly because it takes a little while to hit stride with these stitches and if we stop too soon we don’t get the full benefit. My feeling is, Yikes! 2007 is almost over! This exhibit is opening in about 15 minutes! And then I get a grip and remember it’s only July….

If you’d like to come in November and/or December, please send me a note. The September and October sessions are nearly full, so if you’re thinking you’d like to come let me know soon. You can reach me at jhall@plimoth.org.

It’s been pretty hot and humid here in southeastern Massachusetts, and it feels like everything has sloooowed down accordingly. As a consequence, there isn’t a great deal to report.

The frames are slumbering quietly behind the office door, each one neatly encased in its canvas bag.

On the way from England is some special “sparkle” thread. This sort of silk was used extensively on the jackets and other embroidered items in the early 1600s, but has been unavailable for decades, if not centuries. Tricia, armed with her formidable powers of persuasion and the fact that, if developed, we’d be instantly buying enough to make it worthwhile to produce, convinced one of the Artisan Manufacturers she mentioned yesterday to bring it back into production. I hope I’ve piqued your curiosity. That’s all I’ll say here, except that if the customs agents are benevolent the thread will be debuting during the August stitching session. I know Tricia is planning a blog entry describing the research, development and testing process, along with some photos.

I mentioned the log sheets that Tricia created to enable us track the exact amount of time spent and thread used for each motif. The other day Tricia whipped them out and did a quick bit of math to figure out how many stitching hours our June session yielded, and what sort of pace that worked out to.

We’ve decided to add two small sessions, one in November and another in early December, intimate gatherings, 6 stitchers maximum. Are you interested? We can set the dates to be most convenient to those who are able to come. Email me with your availability.

AUGUST DATES: There’s been a little confusion about the dates of the August embroidery bee. We’ll be meeting and embroidering for three days, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8, THURSDAY, AUGUST 9, AND FRIDAY, AUGUST 10. On the questionnaire that went out with the sample kits there’s a typo which I will not reproduce here lest I cause more confusion. These are the right dates. See you in Plymouth.

Tricia describes the process of adapting the embroidery pattern for the cuffs, collar, and wings, (which are absent from the jacket whose embroidery pattern we’re using):

The jacket pattern that we are working with has a collar, cuffs, and the little wings that come from the shoulders. When it came time to transfer the pattern to these pieces, we had to do a little research. The jacket we are adapting does not have these details, so how do we choose? For the collar, we looked at several examples to see if the collar had a mirrored pattern or was cut out from the repeat. The second question to answer was if the design was right side up or upside down when viewed from the back. [Jill here. The collar is a small semi-circular piece of cloth, on the left in the first picture. It is sewn to the center back neckline. The collar hangs down the back, with the embroidered side up. The side that touches the back of the jacket is unworked.] On the ones we looked at, the collar is cut from the repeat such that the curve of a coil fit in the center rounded part of the collar. This means it is viewed upside down when installed in the jacket. The jackets we viewed also showed that the pattern on the collar matched almost exactly the pattern on the part of the back of the jacket which was covered by the collar. So we followed this guidance.

For the wings (the second picture), the examples showed that the design was just cut in the same orientation as the front of the jacket, and the pattern was right side up when viewed from the front. For the cuffs (the two shapes on the right in the first photo), we had a great picture of a cuff laid out before the MET jacket was mounted years ago. It showed that a modification had been made to the design to put a carnation at the center middle, pointing to the free end of the cuff. Then two coils emanated from the bottom of the carnation, each holding a different motif – but mirrored. We tried to follow this lead the first time we drafted the pattern, but the cuffs for the Laton jacket are not as deep as those on the MET jacket, therefore this scheme didn’t work out. Instead, we put a pink motif in the center and cut the design with the edge of the pattern.

(The third picture is two of the five gussets.)

For the gussets, we followed the V&A jacket and used the area of the design that has thistles on it for each of the five gussets.

Tricia