2009 November | The Embroiderer's Story

Archive for November, 2009

Jill’s Gusset Dilema

Published November 30, 2009 in General. 0 Comments

Part of Tricia’s good luck note in the box of materials asked me to take lots of photos and keep good records of the process. It’s in my nature, anyway; between my historical and her scientific research background we’re in good shape to document the living daylights out of this thing. I’ll put excerpts from my notes in italics.

Because they’re my least favorite part of jacket construction, I always tackle the gussets first. (I used to do my weekend homework on Friday night, too, how did you know?)

To solve the problem of stitching plaited braid through the embroidery encroaching on the seam lines, we decided to leave a margin of plain linen around each gusset, effectively enlarging the seam allowance. In the first photo you can see how I cut out the gusset and folded the seam allowance leaving that plain margin for the eventual gold embroidery. 8/21 – suffocating humidity but linen is holding a very nice crease.

At this point I realized that the gussets, at least two of them, were decidedly too long to fit well into the places we’d left for them. I thought I might be able to “ease” the gusset into the slit, although I very much doubted whether the real gussets, literally crusted with embroidery and metal thread as they are, would give even a scridge.

The V&A notes say that the Laton jacket’s gussets were sewn in with a whipstitch from the wrong side, so that’s what I tried first. The “easing” was a miserable failure; that first gusset bubbled so badly I took it out (carefully!) and set it in again. I totally see why they covered these seams with embroidery; fraying badly at point. It will be near impossible to sew in gussets with embroidery on the points.

Side gusset on right front sewed in more quickly and neatly but much worse fraying at the point and much worse misalignment at hem.

At this point I put aside the gussets. I had an upcoming date to meet Wendy and sew oes on the real jacket; we agreed to talk over the issue in person and get Tricia on the phone for some decisions.

Those .%/? Gussets

Published November 29, 2009 in General. 4 Comments

Jill writes:

I’ve made quite a few jackets of this type. Over the years I did a couple by hand but most were what I called museum-quality-reproductions. Everything that shows when the jacket is done is hand work, and anything else (mostly internal seams) is done on the sewing machine. From the very beginning of this project, I was concerned about the gussets. Or godets. Or little triangle pieces, whatever you like to call them, they’re a pain.

The gussets are off-grain triangles inserted into the hem of the jacket, on this version two on each front piece and one in the center back. To make room for them you just slice into the body of the garment, which means that the top of the slice is a weak point. As you sew the gusset in, no matter which method you use, you have to decrease the seam allowance to almost nothing. It is very difficult to reinforce that point, and in my opinion it is the design flaw in an otherwise lovely garment. So I was always a little concerned about that piece of the construction.

Once the embroidery was underway, I became quietly more concerned. The embroidery pattern on our reproduction is drawn right up to the seam lines. Some of our embroiderers diligently covered all the edge lines, meaning that the embroidery extends into the seam allowance area. When you begin to examine the original jackets, you see that some have embroidery right up to, sometimes even right over, the seam lines; on others the embroidery halted a fraction of an inch from the edge. (THAT way would certainly simplify construction.) Live and learn. If anybody’s taking notes for their own embroidered jacket, I strongly suggest leaving yourself a tiny unembroidered margin at the edges.

Even more, the gusset seams have to be covered with plaited braid embroidery. Wendy particularly was not-so-quietly worried about trying to work plaited braid literally through the embroidery that runs right up to the seam line. How much damage would be done to the GST petals, the silk leaves and the gold plaited braid coils that bump up to the gusset seams? How much damage to the seams themselves, with their itsy-bitsy seam allowances?

When I unpacked the jacket model, I noticed another reason to be concerned about the gussets. They didn’t look like they would fit in the space we left. (Insert your favorite unprintable exclamation here.)

More tomorrow

Making the Muslin

Published November 28, 2009 in General. 1 Comment

I start now on some of the fantastic stories of the construction of the jacket. Jill worked earlier this fall making a muslin of the jacket to prove out the construction instructions we received from the V&A based on the Layton jacket. Jill will be writing this and the next several blogs about the process. She writes:

Midway through the embroidery process, with the lace also well underway, we turned our thoughts to the eventual construction of the jacket. One of our first research stops was Susan North at the V&A, of course, and we got a real surprise. She sent over some fairly detailed construction notes with a strict requirement that we Not Mention where we got them. The V&A was in the process of putting together a book about historical clothing construction methods, and one of the garments to be included was the Laton jacket. Score! I read them through, sent off a couple of clarifying questions, and then stashed the instructions and the answers for future use.

Last August, we were ready to begin the construction of the model jacket. I received a box from Tricia which contained the garment pieces traced on big pieces of linen – with the embroidery pattern on them. Wendy had encouraged Tricia to trace the embroidery pattern on the linen (55ct Kingston from Zweigart, like the real jacket) and even though it meant many hours of work, Tricia agreed. I’m glad she did; it certainly made working on the model more interesting, and it will make the finished model a more visually appealing artifact. Also in the box was the piece of silk Tricia dyed a delicious pink, a huge piece of gridded freezer paper (how brilliant is that? Gridded!) also with the pattern pieces traced on it, and a good-luck note.

The construction notes mostly made sense, but I’m a pretty visual person, I guess, and I knew that parts of it I’d have to see when I got there. The first step, though, was to cut out the linen garment pieces.

Plaited Braid on Gussets

Published November 27, 2009 in General. 0 Comments

Kris helped us get ready for construction in another way – stitching the plaited braid on the gussets before they were installed. As you will read soon in Jill’s description of making the muslin, the gussets were a tremendous problem for us. The solution which we rested upon was to work plaited braid on the embroidered gusset first, tapering it near the point. We would then applique them onto the jacket before slitting the jacket. The tips would extend a bit onto the embroidery to make it fit. More on why in a few days

Tricia

Putting on the Detached Pieces

Published November 26, 2009 in General. 1 Comment

Kris took many photos to help document the attachment of the detached buttonhole wings and peapods. I share a few here. We stitched the pieces on a waste piece of linen and planned the embroidery so that the ends would be on the edges where the embroidery would be attached to the linen of the jacket. That way we could thread up these ends and use them to attach the pieces as well as ‘bury’ the ends at the same time.

Checking over the Jacket Pieces

Published November 25, 2009 in General. 1 Comment

Before this post – I hear all the comments for bringing the event to you all who are far away! I was planning on doing some sort of video and putting it up on the web. When I talk to the Museum Director on Monday – I will bring up the professional video idea. Let me know in the comments your votes – poster, notecards, book, bookmarks, screen saver, computer background, phone background, etc. Love to hear your ideas!

Onward:

In late September, Kris Andrews arrived to help finish the jacket embroidery. We had a few tasks – first, we needed to go over each piece bit-by-bit to see if there was anything that had been forgotten and then stitch it. I am almost sure someday we will find some little fiddly bit that we forgot – a vein or something like that. Inevitable. There is so much to this piece. I also see the same evidence on old pieces, when the embroidery design is so complex you can’t see the omissions.

The next task was to finish a few tendrils and the missing spangles. Then on to putting on the last of the detached pieces. Kris is a wiz and was tremendous at going over everything. On top of that, she helped me out by scanning the entire jacket on the frame (I think I showed pictures of this before) so I could do long term research using that FFT method.

When she was done – we were ready to take them off the frame. All was done but the coif! More on that piece of embroidery and its progress soon.

Tricia

The Details on the Grand Reveal

Published November 24, 2009 in General. 7 Comments

Many of you readers will be receiving an invitation soon – We have a mailing list we used to send them out. Maybe you were a stitcher, lacemaker or contributed to the project. Possibly as a member of the museum. If you didn’t – an electronic version is here for you to view so you can get tickets to see the jacket in its complete glory.

Isn’t the invitation beautiful! I want to frame mine.

Tricia

The Grand Reveal – December 10th

Published November 23, 2009 in General. 4 Comments

Plimoth Plantation will be hosting an event on December 10th, 2009 from 4pm – 8pm to reveal the finished embroidered jacket. At this event, visitors will be given timed tickets to enter the room where an interpreter will be wearing the jacket to give the viewer a better impression of what these spectacular pieces would have looked like. While waiting, visitors will be treated to slide shows of the project as well as demonstrations by several of the artisans who worked on the project. This is a singular and very special event and shouldn’t be missed!

Once the event is over, the jacket will be transported to Winterthur in Delaware where it will go on display in the Spring. When it became apparent that the original exhibit for which the jacket was made would not be mounted due to the recent economic recession, Plimoth began looking for a venue where the jacket could be immediately available to the public while a modified exhibition was planned. Winterthur has graciously stepped in and will show the jacket in the galleries from the Spring of 2010 until the Fall of 2011 when it will join a larger exhibition planned on embroidery and materials culture. This larger exhibition will run into early 2012. As more details on the opening at Winterthur are available, they will be shared in the blog.

The future exhibitions with the jacket and its companion coif and forehead cloth will be posted here. As funding is secured, we expect that the jacket will make a return to Massachusetts and be available for view here, but in the meantime – come to the Grand Reveal on December 10th!

Details on the event tomorrow

Tricia

Diamonds – She was Covered in Diamonds!

Published November 22, 2009 in General. 4 Comments

No pictures today. That is your tease of the day. I write this as we just finished a fitting on Cinderella, transforming her to Faith. We got to see how Faith looks when she moved. Faith is not quite finished, she has her wings to apply and the front seams to finish and her gorgeous lace to add.

But it was like Diamonds. She was covered in Diamonds that glittered. You never understand the profusions of spangles until you see them ‘breathe’. It took everyone’s breath away.

There have been many, many times on this project that some ‘book learning’ or image I have seen that has come to life in my hands and then I go “Ah Ha” because I fully understand it. That happened today. While I filmed Faith sparkling in a low light room, I remembered a passage written in the early 1600’s. I couldn’t find it to include in this blog post – I have put it in before. But the observer stated that for the best viewing of embroidery in the light it must be worked in Carnacion silk and spangs – lot of spangs. In fact, he essentially said that all you needed were spangs.

He was right on the money. You see the light colored flowers and the spangs. That is what jumps out at you from afar. We worked the spangles pretty dense on this piece, but not as dense as I have seen before. I always thought covering the whole ground was pretty nasty looking. Not in a low light and breathing! WOW. I might have to try it now.

Tricia

More Portraits

Published November 21, 2009 in General. 7 Comments

I received a lovely email the other day from Diane Jenkins with the reference to a portrait in her local museum. It is the Amy Seymour portrait and it hangs in the Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum. The day I checked, their search page was under work but I was able to find it on-line in under a print ordering service. Take a look. I have added links to more portraits also – Unknown Lady, formerly called Lucy Harrington, Countess of Bedford, c. 1605 by Isaac Oliver and An Unknown Lady in Fancy Dress, also known as The Persian Lady, c. 1590-1600 by Marcus the Younger Gheeraerts. We will be visiting this last portrait on the Jacket Tour.

A few more for your visual delight today -

Potrait of a Lady, here called Arabella Stuart by Marcus Gheeraerts

and a new favorite of mine because of the scalloped hem, a portrait owned by the Queen:

Portrait of a Woman, British School c. 1620

If you know of a portrait with an embroidered waistcoat that I haven’t featured in the blog – let me know! We are tying to amass a database of all of them.

Tricia