As of September 12, 2008, here is the collar piece. You’ll notice it has both gold work and sequins, necessitating the use of shades just to look at it.

I’m pretty sure Tricia is going to blog about this piece, and I don’t want to scoop her so I won’t say any more - but this picture really is worth a thousand words.

May be sent to

Plimoth Plantation

c/o Kim Corben, Development

PO Box 1620

Plymouth, MA 02362

Please write on your check or enclose with your contribution a note saying:

“Restricted to Embroidered Jacket Project” or something to that effect.

And thank you so much for asking!

Cheryl asked how much we need. I will sweep together the estimates and let you know in dollars, but here’s a list of expenses.

Every time we have an embroidery session we need to buy food supplies. It is most cost effective, not to mention most delicious to have Marcia cooking for us, we spend much less than if we bought food through a restaurant, but depending on number of participants and number of days we need $200-400.

We need to buy some supplies for the lace making; pins, prickers, cards for the prickings and some other things.

We need to buy the silver and gold for the teardrop spangles.

We need to buy the gold and silver threads for the lace.

We’ll need more GST, especially the first three colors - bisse, carnation and redde.

These are just materials costs; I’ll have to look up the figures on what we allowed (in the grant application) for a hired embroideress for the vines. Plus, I’m sure I’m forgetting something….

Ah, yes, I was just reminded about buying the sequins, the little round bits that’ll be sewn onto the cloth itself. (These were and, I think, still are made by coiling a wire and smacking it sharply to flatten it, Susan. The teardrop ones, though, were punched out of a flat piece of metal, almost a metal ribbon. The historic spangles themselves told us, by the striations visible at high magnification, by the ‘burls’ on the edges of the spangle and the edge of the hole, and by the irregular spangles, the ones punched too close to the edge of the ribbon or too close to their neighbor spangle. That’s the abridged version, but more will be coming soon, and with photos.)

Tricia has promised more blogs, including instructions for the plaited braid stitch and more on the teardrop spangle quest. I have on hand a few more blogs written by Wendy on spangle history, teardrop and other shapes, and I will start with those tomorrow, hopefully.

See you then.

Tonight’s post was written by Wendy, a Spangle Quester with a background in metal work and jewelry making. I know the lacers wish we wouldn’t call the teardrop shaped metal bits that will be worked into the bobbin lace “spangles”. To lacers, spangles are a hoop of beads affixed to the end of a particular kind of lacemaking bobbin. Be-spangled bobbins are for a certain kind of lace making, and I’ve been told the spangles weight the bobbins thus aiding the tensioning in that kind of lacemaking. However, having seen some of these bobbins, I think they may just be an excuse for pretties on the fiber tools. (OK lacers, I know you’re out there. Tell us the real story.) We keep using the term, though, to distinguish between the teardrop shaped metal bits on the lace and round metal bits (we’re calling them sequins) that will be sewn to the jacket in between the gold and silk embroidery. In the 17th century round sparkly metal bits sewn decoratively to a garment were sometimes called “oes”, as in the plural of ‘o’. Anyway, as you can see Wendy found a morass of terminology in the historical record:

Being involved with the jacket has been a wonderful experience so when Tricia said to me “you need to look at these and see what you think” I was more than curious. As mentioned in a previous entry Tricia and Mark had examined the spangles under magnification and were able to draw some conclusions, take measurements and ask even more questions. So I began first to look for anything “written”- after all these are over 400 years old- but because they were not a “necessity” and were used on a woman’s garment what if anything would be out there?

First-

While digging for information on spangles (those “twitty little things” -PF) I found that the terms used were not necessarily consistent and that there were not usually references to the origin or a cited work- frustrating but nonetheless intriguing.

Spangle – contemporary - used almost interchangeably for sequins which come in two styles – flat and cupped. Paillettes refers to the large sequin disks with either one or two holes punched at the top edge (this helps create a “fish scale” look by hiding the stitching which secures them to the ground fabric).

Spangles as used prior to 1850 refer to little pieces of metal or tags; this term appears to be English in origin.

Paillon – a term used in metalsmithing- “another name for a solder snippet or small piece of sheet metal used decoratively” – Untracht, Oppi; Metal Techniques for Craftsmen- 1968

Paillette- a sequin or spangle sewn onto a piece of clothing- a term we use currently to denote the small round sequins sewn to the cloth ground. (French)

Tremolo- the Italian term for the hanging type of spangle (makes perfect sense as the hanging type would move or “tremble” thus adding to the sparkling or glittering effect especially in candle light). M. Channing Linthicum; Oes, R.E.S. Vol 7 1931 (No 26 April) Oxford Journals

In his essay “Oes”, Linthicum discusses the misleading lumping together of the descriptions of these two very different decorative elements. “Oes were metal eyelets tacked or clinched to the material in such designs as “squares”, “Esses”, ‘wheatears” etc or powdered over the whole surface. They could hardly be designated spangles since they occur in accounts usually with spangles” He defines spangles as “thin leaves of gold or other metal usually attached by the top and hanging free so that they trembled at every movement of the wearer.”

Ohhh sparklies!!! Not only does the gilt silk and the oes or paillettes but the spangles sparkle too! (The examples we have seen are pretty well oxidized/ tarnished)

So thinking I now knew what I was looking for I plodded ahead and ran straight into a wall.