This post was written on Tuesday, October 29.

Some have asked what our plan is for the gold work.  We have had many plans.  Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C.  Mostly every time someone asked me this important question, I would put my fingers in my ears and sing “La la la la -  I can’t hear you!”.

And thus Plan D was born.  We had originally hoped that funding would come through and allow us to hire some fast needles to work the gold. That was Plan A.  Now we are drafting a smaller group of volunteers
and training them.  We are having them work every other coil so the variation of people will be less easy to see.  By the end of next week we will know how that plan is working out as two people are going to work on this one piece for a week each.  Hopefully we don’t have to implement Plan Q.  That’s the one where Tricia does all the plaited braid.

I will also let you know by Friday if Judy is a babbling idiot from too much plaited braid.  Here is her day 2 progress.  You can see how she is skipping every other coil to let another person work in between. We also learned an important piece of data.  About 3 to 3 1/2 coils per spool of gold thread.  I will be counting spools on Friday to see if we will need to order more or if our original estimate is holding.

Tricia

Judy Laning is here working this week on plaited braid.  We choose one of the jacket fronts to work on. She started Monday and worked one whole coil of plaited braid.  Then she started on the second one.

That is when the questions started.  Some of the coils start from another coil in a very shallow angle and some at a very deep angle. So the question was how to do that very tapered area.  And do we start there or from the base of the flower and then finish and taper at the end.  A great excuse to open up the photos and look into it.  The plaited braid forms  a “V” and so you can see where the coil was started and where it ended. We fired up the computer and started going coil to coil.  Towards the flower, away from the flower, away from the flower, towards the flower….

We had our answer. Where you start the plaited braid didn’t matter. So either at the coil base or at the flower, which ever was easier and allowed the tapered coils to be worked.  I have included pictures of both types of intersections of the coils and how Judy worked them. She is doing lovely work.

Tricia

The Embroiderers’ Guild is housed in an apartment in Hampton Court, one of Henry VIII’s favorite palaces.  If you ever have the chance to visit, take it.  It is a lovely place.  The Royal School of Embroidery also is located there.  Call ahead, each has a little store with wonderful goodies and books to buy.

Once we were done viewing the panel, we took the rest of the day walking around the palace and viewing the inner rooms that are open to the public.  It became fun to imagine people with embroidered clothing walking through these halls.  I love when I can get closer to the context of the real situation.  Even the gardens reminded me of the embroideries we see.  There was also a few portraits in one hall, one we all recognize with one of the long versions of the jackets.

Tricia

A few weeks ago we finished all the detached butterfly wings (sans one).  I wish we had the knowledge then that I have now.  The wings are one color and then have a rim of a separate color at the tips. From the earlier photography we couldn’t tell if the detached buttonhole changed color or if there was an edging added after the wing was finished.  Since we didn’t know, we tried both and mixed it up.  From examining the jacket, I now know that the added edging is the answer.

We still have one more butterfly wing to work. The hardest, and it is waiting there with my name on it.  The wing in question has two colors, but instead of being an edging, the wing was split into two (see the picture here) and worked in two colors.  But the question was how to work them and join them – detached.

I didn’t come up with the exact answer from examining the jacket, but clues were there.  It seemed as if the smaller of the wing segments was attached to the linen on both sides with only the tip detached.  Then the larger of the segments also seemed to be stitched on the join edge with the tips and other side freely detached.  I think I will stitch two separate pieces and sew them on
as just described.

Tricia

The title of this post was Wendy’s reaction to my email that the Laton Jacket was sitting in front of me ready for inspection.  I loved it.

Back to the jacket, Wendy had a number of questions for me pertaining to the embroidery on 1359-1900.  They all centered around one issue – “did we figure it out right????”  The great thing was that I didn’t find many elements that we had been mistaken about.  Phew.  But there was one which really surprised me.  The carnation (or pink) calyx was actually stitched in trellis stitch on most of the jacket and not detached buttonhole like we did.  It took awhile to figure out how we
were wrong about that one.  But then I noticed that the two carnations/pink calyx (so what is the plural of calyx?) on the back of the jacket were stitched with detached buttonhole and this was the only photography we had at the time.

My goal when I entered the storage room for both the V&A and EG was to photograph a close up of every motif on the piece so I could go back later and look at this type of detailing which I wouldn’t have time to systematically do at the piece.  I achieved that goal with over 1000 pictures total. Thank heavens for digital!  I think it will take months to review the data as questions come up.  But I am trying to record what I learned immediately in the blog while it is sharp in my mind.

Here is our calyx.  Even though we are wrong on some…we aren’t taking them out now!

Tricia