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.

Tricia writes:

Good Question. Jill has been asking me this question about once a month recently. I keep pretending I don’t hear her.

Of all the elements of the jacket, the vines are the only one that all touch. When it is continuous like that, it is hard to cover up the differences between stitchers. This is a really hard one; I don’t think anyone is prepared to do the entire jacket. Honestly, I had an arm injury three years ago that keeps me from intense stitching (especially anything with time pressure). I need help on this one.

Our plan A was to hire an expert (already identified) to stitch most of the vines in about three weeks and augment with one or two other people (volunteers like myself). But then the grant we were counting on was delayed and might not come until after the jacket is finished, so we have been shoe-stringing this project. Now it is time for plan B.

I can say that we should have a very small group stitch this part of the jacket to keep the uniformity needed to make it look really good. Now how to find that group of people. I would love to hear from those reading the blog with ideas. Is anyone interested in sample kits to try out for this little team? How about a fundraiser to pay for the labor? I am open to suggestions. Email them to me at tricia@alum.mit.edu

Tricia