Having been trained as a scientist, I am apt to always question a statement, think about other ways things could have been done and ask for data to back up the statements.  I have to thank Susan and her patience with me all day.  The lack of written records because of the Great Fire in London frustrates us because many of the answers to these questions would have been recorded or derived from the record. But we have to try to derive the answers from the limited number of
embroidered examples.

When Susan brought up that the pattern outline was drawn on the linen by the tailor and then given over to the embroiderers workshop for the embroidery pattern to be applied, I had to question.  Not because I thought she was wrong, but I always need to find the evidence to defend the position.

We had the sleeves in front of us.  So I started looking closely at the inking.  What I saw was that the outline for the sleeve was done in strokes and contained similar errors to my tracing of the pattern outline.  Slight places where the ink was off track and a redo of that area happened a few times.  Also where the ink was thicker where the stroke started and then thin where the ink ran dry.  I asked if they had any evidence of tracing or template using.  We didn’t come to a conclusion on that.

Then the inking of the embroidery pattern.  It was much better done. There were thickenings of the ink and some places I noted where the drawing had elements that overlapped.  Not printed for sure.  The person who drew the pattern was very expert.  The same deviations from the intended line weren’t seen – possibly the difference between a tracing and freehand drawing by an expert.  What I did see that was interesting was an overlapping of motifs.  Let me explain.  On a particular butterfly, the outline of the wings contained stripe and half circle details.  On one wing the pattern of half circles did not overlap the stripes.  But on the other, one half circle overlapped a stripe – as if the drafter was free handing the design and couldn’t make the elements fit.  I don’t know how the embroiderer would have treated this mistake in the drafting.  There were several of these
types of errors when I took a cursory look.

Overall the pattern for the sleeve was custom for the shape and size of the sleeve, not a cut of a repeating pattern like ours is.  It is beautiful and very complex.  I would so love to analyze the ink on the outline and the embroidery pattern to determine if it was from the same bottle or not.    Won’t happen, but wouldn’t it be interesting to know!

I do agree with Susan that an expert drafter made the embroidery pattern and that the tailor did the outline.  But it was worth looking closely at the piece to support the claim.  Susan suggested that the master embroiderer in the workshop may have been the pattern designer/transferrer.  There is evidence to support that in the practices of today’s workshops.  In the Japanese tradition, the only person who can make a new design is the master.  Here you see me trying to trace our pattern.

Tricia

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

Tricia continues the story of how the embroidery pattern was transferred to the pattern pieces and the decisions that needed to be made along the way.

As we talked about previously in the blog, we decided to add a matching coif and forehead cloth to this mad project. Since we didn’t have a piece to use as a model, we used the pattern for one that Plimoth has made many times. (Jill here. We chose one of our several coif patterns, different sizes and slightly different shapes, all copied from original 17^th-century coifs.) Then the question was how to orient the pattern. After examining many pictures of historical coifs, I noted that the majority of them do not have any symmetrical patterns. They all seem to cut a pattern out of the master without regard for left or right. From our ‘dead bird’ episode, you will know that I was too wrapped up in symmetry to note which side was up or down on the coif and got going the wrong way and seemed to kill a few birdies in the process. After we discovered my mistake (which was immortalized in a nasty photo of me on-line), we wondered if any care was made to line up the pattern on the seam line that goes atop the head. Our conclusion from viewing photos was that there wasn’t a great deal of fussiness going on in the 17th century, so we barreled ahead with live birds a second time.

For the forehead cloth, a similar viewing of historical photos revealed a similar disregard for symmetry. But the 90 degree point of the cloth was the ‘up’ on the pattern.

Tricia

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

Day One of Session One is history and went very well. I was really more nervous about yesterday, when so much had to be done. Today was just meeting lovely people I’d only corresponded with, or at most talked with on the phone.

Much of the morning was spent in introductions, ground rules (NO COFFEE NEAR THE WORK AREA), and adjusting frames, lights, and magnifiers. Tricia assigned work stations and got everyone started. It seemed like that first stitching was a little nerve-wracking; breaking up the white space with the first bit of colored silk is so irrevocable.

Lunch was delicious, like all the other food. Our meals are being catered by Marcia, a southern cook in the best tradition. We’re eating like princesses. Cheese & tomato tart, abundant salad, fruit, pound cake; if we’re not careful we’ll all have to be rolled out of here in a few days!

A bit of shopping was squeezed in after lunch. Volunteers receive a 10% discount in our museum shops, and a number of special treats including books, scrimshaw needlework tools, and charts, were stocked especially for the delight of the embroiderers. There are more goodies on order that will be in before the August session.

This is the back of the jacket, where Tricia has been stitching one of each motif. As she worked, she took detailed photos of the steps which she used to create instruction manuals for each station.

The only cloud in the day involved what is now called ‘the dead bird coif’. While everyone was working, Tricia began to trace the embroidery pattern onto the paper coif template. This bit is truly fascinating, as it is a glimpse into how these patterns may have been used in the 17^th century. Months ago Tricia had deciphered the ‘master pattern repeat’ of the jacket. She and Denise created a master pattern, several repeats of the pattern both vertically and horizontally which enabled them to then lay the garment pattern pieces over the embroidery pattern and trace.

Tricia had the coif-shaped paper I traced off for her and laid it over the master pattern on a light box. She was about 2/3 done when I peeked over her shoulder. She showed me how she’d moved the paper around to get the most complete repeats in strategic places. “Wow, that’s beautiful. But, umm, the birds are upside down.” The coif shape is odd, and it is really hard to see how it goes together unless you’ve made some (and sometimes even then) or worn them. In order to really see how the pattern would lie when worn, we eventually had to tape it together and put it on. Amid hearty laughter at the silly paper hat, we all agreed that, sadly, the birds were not only upside down, but with their feet in the air like that they looked dead. “It’s a lot faster to trace than embroider” Tricia observed, glad we’d discovered the mistake sooner than later.

Tomorrow I’ll have more pictures of the embroidery.

First, the new arrivals: samples came today from Irene A, Ann B, and Patricia E.

Today Tricia and Kris brought down everything else we needed for tomorrow. Wendy, Kris and Ann showed up (or were drafted) a day early to help. Most of the day we worked in the Colonial Wardrobe Department’s big workroom.

Lots happened today: pieces of linen with patterns drawn in ink were stitched to the canvas strips of slate frames (here’s Laura working on that);

The frames were assembled and the linen pieces laced onto the side bars of the frames to maintain correct working tension (Kris in the foreground lacing, Wendy on the other end of the couch stitching linen to a frame);

Tricia traced a section of the master pattern onto a triangle-shaped piece of paper so we can make that forehead cloth I told you about last week. A little later, she transferred the pattern from the paper to a piece of linen, which was then sewn & laced into a frame.

Late in the afternoon, we moved to Accomack, which is where we’ll be working most of this week.

Here’s Kris & Laura putting together some floor stands. These will hold the framed pieces of linen. The stands are adjustable for height and angle of working to suit the embroiderer. Those boxes on the table on the right hold four daylight lamps with magnifiers; we unpacked them a few minutes later.

Ann sorted the spools of silk into boxes. The boxes will go on the tables so supplies are in easy reach. Don’t they look like bags of candy?

I didn’t get any pictures of it, but Kathy and Laura moved all the supplies we’ll need for coffee & tea breaks and meals to Accomack, and set everything up. It looks beautiful.

We left Accomack by 6:00 pm, well ahead of schedule. Tricia referred to doing things at the last minute a couple of times today. I’ve seen The Last Minute (remember those ambitious exhibits I told you about?) and this wasn’t it. I even got home in time to post tonight. We’ll all be back by 9:30 tomorrow morning to meet the rest of this session’s embroiderers.

Tonight Tricia finishes the story begun in yesterday’s post of how the pattern for the embroidered jacket was drafted. This story is just one example of the many things we’re learning by doing that might not have been discovered just by studying existing examples.

Well, after a long day of trying to come up with the right master pattern, Denise and I called it quits. I took the materials home and was to start again with a fresh vine tracing. As you can see in the photo, I covered the dining room table with pictures and kept staring at the sleeves, front, and back trying to work out what was going on with the piece. All of a sudden I could ’see it’ – a nice 3 x 4 coil block. The repeat leapt out at me and I quickly sketched it out. Then I took the motifs and cut them from our xeroxed tracings. Even though I assumed that I would have to totally redo the vine tracing because we had taken that from the EG panel, I placed the motifs in order on top of it. To my amazement it worked perfectly! I was stunned. Not only did the two historic pieces share many motifs and a very close stitch/color vocabulary – but they seemed to be built on the same coiling stem pattern. This is another piece of circumstantial evidence which leads to a conclusion that these pieces were worked from the same professional workshop.

From the experience, I conjecture that the following MIGHT be how some of these pieces were designed. A master coiling stem pattern would be drawn up by a draftsman on staff and would reside at the company. A set of standard motifs would then be available to choose from to place on this vine depending on the purpose of the intended object or the whim of the customer. That way some customization was available with with very little original design work.Something I had seen before seemed to support this hypothesis and a well timed business trip through Washington, D.C. provided the opportunity to check a rare book again. A very expensive and rare modern reproduction of The Great Book by Thomas Trevilian (1616) resides at the Folger Library in Washington, D.C. I have been viewing this and its original cousin (1608) by the same author for years everytime I am in town. Thomas Trevilian is thought by scholars to have been a draftsman of pattern for the decorative arts – woodworkers and embroiderers primarily. In any case, he certainly had access to many patterns. It seems late in his life he sat down (twice as he didn’t expire too quick)
to record in one place patterns he knew, had in his possession, or invented. We many never know which. He also recorded well know plates from other earlier publications in his manuscripts. Plate no. 947 in The Great Book (1616) is a coiled stem design which resembles closely those used for jackets such as our source and the Laton jacket. The one
thing that had always bothered me about this plate on other visits was that it was incomplete. This was unusual as the other hundred or so plates for embroidery in the books were complete and could easily be traced and repeated. This coiled stem was missing many of the leaves and small bugs that fill the voids.

Well, after the experience of making the master for our jacket, I wonder if the Trevilian plate is closer to what the professional workshop may have used. A master vine with many motifs which could be moved around and a few of the filler leaves/fauna that could be repeated where needed. Just enough to allow the draftsman to customize the pattern for a customer.

I will leave you with those thoughts and a few answers to some questions that were posed in the comments. A reader was interested in if we would publish the pattern on the web for download. The answer is no. We have been very fortunate to have such cooperation from the many institutions which house the historic embroideries, therefore we must respect their ownership of the intellectual property and design. We have been granted a one time use of the pattern at this point. That said, if many write in with such interest, we will explore a royalty relationship with theV&A and might publish the manual we are developing to stitch the jacket complete with the patterns. What I can say now is that Thistle Threads has entered into a contract with the V&A to adapt the jacket pattern into a series of kits using the same materials. These pieces will range from smalls to a larger piece that uses much of the repeat pattern. The kits will come out sometime in the early fall and will help to support both the V&A and Plimoth Plantation with part of the proceeds.This is the same reason why there aren’t any non-public domain historical pictures up yet on the blog. We are negotiating with the institutions for permission to use the photos we took of their collections on the blog. We really hope we will be able to do that in the future. Until then you may need to find a referenced book to see some of these beautiful images.

Tricia

Today Tricia Wilson Nguyen is guest-writing. The actual pattern development was carried out by Tricia and Denise Lebica, a former tailor with the Colonial Wardrobe Department, with help from Johanna Tower, who worked with us as both an intern and a tailor.

Tonight we will start a discussion of how the embroidery pattern for the jacket was developed. One of the considerations when we were choosing a jacket for the adaptation was how to draft the embroidery pattern. Our first choice jacket, the Laton jacket at theV&A museum, was behind glass and wouldn’t be able to be accessed for photography from all sides. A quick review of the available photos from scholars, the auction house and the V&A did not result in all the jacket being viewable, especially the all important back. It is on the back of the jacket where a photo can often be taken that shows much of the repeat of the pattern and has the least curvature. Many of you will realize that tracing a motif from a picture of a curved object won’t give you a true shape.

The eventual choice (V&A acc. number 1359-1900) kept coming to the top of our list as it has a close cousin in the collection of the Embroiderers’ Guild. Housed in Hampton court, and called both a cushion and a coif in different references, is a panel which is unmistakably related to the jacket design. The panel (EG acc. number 1982.79) has been photographed flat and contains nine of the twelve motifs that are on the jacket. The existing photography could be used to trace the related elements and give us a start, as well as the photography of the jacket itself. If you would like to see this piece, there are two publications which show it. The first is “Raised Embroidery” by Barbara and Roy Hirst. It is pictured in its entirety on page 9. A slightly cropped version of the photo is shown in “Treasures from the Embroiderers Guild Collection” edited by Elizabeth Benn. The panel is shown on page 15.

So to start, we referred to the on-line information on the jacket measurement, divided by the number of coils vertically and came up with a coil height of 4 inches. This matched our measurements on the jacket at the MET and so we thought we were off and running. We enlarged all the photography of the V&A jacket and the EG panel so that the coils matched this number. A week later, we had to rescale when costume curator Susan North (as a double check) pulled the jacket from storage and gave us specific measurements we requested. In fact the coil height was 2 5/8″. We were glad we checked as the published measurement was from the tip of the sleeve to the collar and not the bottom of the jacket to the collar!

Leaves of tracing paper were placed over sections in the photographs and 2 x 2 repeats were traced off both pieces until all the elements were captured. This required us to scan the pieces and check off motifs and their repeats until we had no more to scratch out. As you look at photos of the jackets, think about how confusing they look to the eye. The repeat in the pattern only shows up if you have a yard or more of the embroidered fabric to look at. But ours was cut up and reassembled in a jacket shape!

These tracing papers were then xeroxed in multiples (as well as rescaled to 2 5/8″). We used the mirror function on the xerox to get matchbook facing patterns, as they are on the front right and left. Now coming up with a vine was all that was left before we could cut and paste! Since a large area of the jacket wasn’t available to trace, the vine pattern that was available to us was the one on the panel. But it was mirrored down the middle of the panel, and we could tell that the jacket didn’t have this flip. So we traced the 3 x 3 vine to the right and then tiled it along a big piece of dressmaker’s paper. You can see Denise tracing the vine to extend it in the photo. At this point we had a large piece of paper with a vine all over it.

For our first attempt, we cut the motifs out of the paper and tried laying it over the vine (here you can see that in process). In some areas they fit well, for some we had to cut the vine out. We continued to refer to the photos of the panel and the jacket to try to put motifs in what would appear to be the correct order. At this point since we were mixing tracings from two different embroidery pieces, we were resigned that our pattern would be an adaptation of the original. Denise and I conferred on the placement of motifs and struggled to make sure that we didn’t have red flowers next to other red flowers and details like that. We never guessed that we might get to the ‘real pattern’…but more on that tomorrow night.Tricia