Tricia writes today:

If you remember, months ago we were trying out gold threads for the plaited braid stitch. Bill Barnes of Golden Threads had made a silk core wrapped with gilt strip for us. When it stitched, it was just too stiff to use, which was a surprise to me. When I gave him my comments, he responded that he had used three ends of Soie Ovale for the core and would I wait a few weeks for another sample using just two ends. He was sure it would work. Well – always trust the master!

We finally got the sample two weeks ago (another one of those international shipping dramas delayed it). Shown here is the sample alone and also stitched next to the previous samples that I had done. The thread is thinner but it still gives a nice and dense plaited braid. More importantly, it stitches easily. Well, as easily as a gold thread can! So I gave the green light to have miles of it made.

A big thanks goes out to Access Commodities who have been coordinating this for us. They are the distributor of Au Ver a Soie thread and supply the silks that Bill is using for the thread. Lamora’s expertise with international shipping is one of the prime reasons we can make this happen!

Tricia

Hi Mary, I’m glad it made you laugh. jmh

Linda H came all the way from Pennsylvania to work on the jacket this weekend. Here’s a picture of Linda pointing out one of the motifs she worked, a butterfly.

Linda brought some of her needlework for show and tell, which was today. Here’s a picture of some of her stitching, which will be part of a beautiful needlework accessories book.

Linda was inadvertently part of a very rude awakening I had today. Wendy was showing her some of the frames, and pointing out what remains to be done. I had thought that the plain worms were stitched in ceylon stitch, like this. Ceylon stitch period. Stop. Done.

So Wendy was saying, “and then the worms get this funny wrapping thing.” And I said, “The Fancy Worms.” And Wendy said, “No, the plain worms.” And she started telling Linda how the wrapping is done. And I said “The Fancy Worms. The plain worms are done.” And Wendy said, “NO. The Plain Worms.” “WHAT?” So apparently the plain worms are NOT DONE. They need wrapping, like this. And I am getting used to that idea.

A couple of updates – Robbin explained in the comments that Laura didn’t have a name tag yesterday so we gave her a spare. Her grandmother’s name is Irene so she picked that one.

I ran into the interpreter whose stays Lacey altered over the last couple of days, and she was all appreciation. Her stays fit so much better and she is much more comfortable. The only problem now is her waistcoat is too big! We can fix that – over her next weekend.

I missed today, the last day of this session, due to a summons to jury duty. I had to go to Brockton, a city, not The Big City, but a city nonetheless. I am definitely a country mouse. Luckily I didn’t get lost, and I found a place to park. The next hurdle was to send my bags through the x-ray machine. Yep. Bags. I have a horror of idle time (I can see your heads nodding out there) so I had … a few things to do. And read.

“Empty your pockets in the tray” I was instructed. Then the project bag went through the machine and “WHAT have you got in there?” the security guard asked. I cringed. “ummm, knitting…” I replied faintly. Then more faintly still “and, umm, embroidery. I can put it back in the car,” I quickly offered, not wanting to cause a fuss and remembering the last jury duty (11 years ago) when I couldn’t bring in ANY needlework at all. The trauma is still fresh.

Fortunately this guard was more compassionate. “Oh, no, wait a minute.” He pulled out the ziploc bag that the jacket project sample kit is in. “I think, wait, what’ve you got in here?” Turns out I’d left a small pair of snips inside the little ziploc. He took those, giving me a receipt to ransom them with at dismissal, and I was on my way.

What I really had in that bag was two books (one for work, one for fun) and the latest issue of Spin-Off magazine; two knitting projects, one simple, one more complicated; and the embroidery sample kit. Fortunately I’d had the foresight to swipe my daughter’s thread cutter necklace before leaving the house so I was wicked in business.

I blissfully knitted my way through the necessary paperwork and jury instructions, dutifully trooped down and up the stairs to a courtroom but was never called. I practiced doing two-color trellis stitch. I tried the knot stitch. I worked on both the knitting projects. I had so much fibery fun I should’ve been paying for the privilege. Actually, now that I think about it, the only thing I didn’t get to at all was the book for work. And now I’m off the jury duty hook for three years.

Tomorrow I’ll find out how the end of the weekend went and share, along with more pictures.

Tonight I have another reading suggestion.

Epstein, Kathleen. An Anonymous Woman Her Work Wrought in the 17^th Century. Curious Works Press, Austin: 1992.

This is one of my very favorite embroidery books. It’s a gem, packed with historical background and excellent how-to instructions. Sadly, it is also out of print.

The whole little book (52 pages) is an analysis of a 17^th-century band sampler in the author’s collection. The patterns are stitched in Spanish stitch (also known as double-running or Holbein stitch) and variations on cross stitch, with some detached buttonhole fillings. There are a few color plates, but mostly the illustrations are line drawings and black-and-white photos. The notes on materials, both the originals and modern substitutions, are valuable.

The stitch diagrams and instructions are probably the best part; if you’re interested in Spanish stitch patterns, you’ll want to dig up a copy. Even if you’re not, it is well worth seeking out. Maybe if there’s enough demand it will even be brought back into print.

By the way, Kathleen Epstein is the same person as Kathleen Staples, frequent contributor to several embroidery journals, and one of my favorite writers on the subject of historical embroidery; I reviewed another volume of hers here.

Tonight we have two more sets of stitch instructions: trellis stitch and spiral trellis stitch. Remember, you don’t have to be perfect at every stitch; you don’t even have to do every stitch on the sample. If you have one stitch you love and are great at, just do that one.

And another book review:

King, Donald and Santina Levey. The Victoria & AlbertMuseum’s Textile Collection: Embroidery in Britain from 1200 to 1750.New York: Canopy Books. 1993.

This volume is almost entirely color plates. The few pages of text form a brief overview of British embroidery, and because it covers 350 years it is very much an overview. The book also contains a glossary and diagrams of some common stitches. The diagrams are nice to have but are not really instructive in that these alone won’t enable one to reproduce a piece of embroidery. But that isn’t the point of this book. The point is the many color reproductions of embroideries in the V & A collections excellent for reference and inspiration.

And, if you have this on your shelf, you can turn to page 63 and see a larger-than-life image of the embroidery pattern we’ll be using on our recreated jacket. See, right in the middle there, where we took the pattern for the embroidery on the header for this blog.

I’ve gotten a couple of questions about this sample piece lately, so I thought today I’d tell you how it came to be. Once we determined that we wanted to do this jacket thing, we needed to create a plan, including a budget. In order to do that we had to know how long it would take to create this jacket. At the same time (this was late fall, 2006) Plimoth Plantation was working with a Marketing consultant to create a packet of information and images that we could use in applications for grants and other funding proposals to support the planned exhibit (of which the jacket would be a part). We needed to include images of a sample of the embroidery that would be on the jacket.

Fulfilling the two needs in an extremely efficient fashion, we traced off a bit of this pattern from V&A 1359-1900 (later we discovered it is reproduced on this page larger than the original). At this point we had not even begun to talk about what jacket, what embroidery pattern, or anything like that. It is purely a coincidence that the sample piece is from the same pattern we ended up choosing for the real jacket. Tricia made her most educated guess at the stitches used, based on close examination of this picture and having studied other 17^th century embroideries in person, and worked the sample accordingly.

So after she had taken it away to work on, our consultant asked what color it was. Well, I said, there’s a blue flower and a bird, in green and yellow, I think (not having the book at the meeting). Red, he replied. Something has to be red. Red is good. Red is attractive. Okay, I said, let me see what I can do. I hustled right out of that meeting and phoned Tricia who fortunately hadn’t started stitching the flower.

Our estimate of 2000-2500 hours to accomplish the embroidery comes from Tricia’s timing of the stitching of this piece. And the photographs came out so nicely (thanks to the talent of the photographer, Ed Nute) that they’ve been used and used and used.

But that’s why what clearly ought to be a blue borage flower (fairly common on embroideries of this period, and a familiar friend to those who study them) is red, red, red. The fact that red is my favorite color had absolutely nothing to do with it, I swear.

AND, the borage flowers on the real jacket will be their proper blue, but more on that another day.