UNSTITCHED COIF – FINISH! MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES
here have I been these past weeks? Stitching away in a sweatshop of my own making. That may sound tedious, but it was actually tons of fun. I had to drone away with intent to meet the completion deadline for the Unstitched Coif project. I’ve completed the embroidery, including some small repairs. All that’s left is neatening up the back a bit, hemming to final size, and shipping.
This is the first of two posts on finish. The next one will present details and commentary, motif by motif. But I still have work to do before mailing, so that will have to wait for another morning.
Yes, that little dip in the upper left is in the original, too. And yes, it does bother me, but (near) verbatim is near verbatim, so I kept it instead of extrapolating what should have been there.
Materials:
- 2.25 spools of Au Ver a Soie’s Soie Surfine spun silk for the fillings, purchased from Needle in a Haystack.
- 1.3 hanks of Golden Schelle’s black four-ply spun silk embroidery floss for the motif outlines. It’s worth noting that this is a hand-dyed product, prepared from a historically documented iron/tannin recipe, and in 500 years will probably have eaten itself to death, exactly as black threads in museum artifacts from the 1500s have deteriorated over time. I love the minor color variation and soft black produced by their small-batch method.
- About 0.25 hank of Tied to History’s Allori Bella silk in black – a reeled filament silk for the heavy perimeter outline. This one claims to be four-ply but is hard to separate. Each ply appeared to be made of three strands. I ended up using two of these constituent strands at a time, which means I got six working threads out of a length of the four-ply.
- About 0.25 of a hank of Japanese Gold #5, from the Japanese Embroidery Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
- One skein of six-strand Cifonda Art Silk (probably rayon) in a light gold color. I bought this in India, as part of a large lot for short money.
- 1.9 strings of 2mm gold tone paillettes, from General Bead. The description says there are 1000 spangles per string. I doubt that. Probably more like 500. Still, that’s a lot of spangles.
- John James needles – #12 beading needles (outlines, spangles, couching), and #10 blunt point beading needles (fills, whipping). The #12s were labeled as being blunt points, too, but they wre far sharper than the #10s. Many of the #10s, because I kept bending them as I worked, and a bent needle is harder to aim accurately.
- Mani di Fati’s 72×74 count linen – as recommended by our Fearless Leader, Toni Buckby.
- Toni’s elegant rendition of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s “Unstitched Coif”, Accession T.844-1974, shared at this link by her special permission.
Stitches Used:
- Fills – mostly double running stitch, with occasional digressions into “Heresy Stitch” (aka half back stitch), back stitch, and wild improvisation when lack of real estate and undulating edges required shoehorning motifs into tiny spaces. With one exception they are all done over 2×2 threads. When I started I thought that over 3×3 might be better, but my brain and hands are so trained to work 2×2 that it drove me nuts, so I reverted to the smaller size. But I didn’t bother ripping out the completed bit. Have fun hunting for it.
- Motif outlines – Reverse chain. A probable departure from historical usage. Carey, in her excellent book Elizabethan Stitches calls out twisted reverse chain as having documented use in 16th century historical artifacts, but mentions plain old reverse chain as having no provenance in that time. Which does seem very odd to me.
- Leaf veins and other gold details overlaid on top of black stitching – Simple couching over a double strand of the gold. Ends plunged. Plunging is another deviation from the historical. I have been schooled now by several people that is a practice common to the mid 1800s, and not before. In the 1580s gold ends were neatly tucked under. Look at all the gold I used, and especially at the short lengths. I voted to save my sanity.
- Stems – Also simple couching, but whipped with two strands of the black Soie Surfine. Where the stem extends a leaf vein, a single line of couching was laid down, but only the stem part was whipped. I began doing this after I finished the first flower, complete with background spangles, and the stems disappeared in the riot of gold.
- Spangles – I affixed my paillettes with three straight stitches each, hopping all over like a water drop on a griddle. Since I almost never strand over this was painful to do, but the ground’s dense weave and light color of the Art Silk convinced me that unless the piece was backlit, it would not be seen. Again, a sanity move.
- Perimeter outline – Yet another historical departure. I originally wanted to do this in Ladder Stitch, but the Allori silk isn’t robust enough to display stitch detail, and the modern severe blackest-black color makes such attempts moot. So I went for double reverse chain, also called Heavy Chain in the RSN’s on line stitch reference, worked as close and small as I could to make a fluid, heavily raised dense line.
Fill Sources:
I used two sources. One is the set of sourced historical redactions Toni provided on the group’s official website. They represent about 18% of the designs I used.
But now is true confessions time, and certainly not a surprise to those who know me, although I’ve avoided mentioning this in our group’s Zoom meetings. About 82% are from my own free books – Ensamplario Atlantio, Volumes I and II, along with the not-yet released Volume III that I am working on right now. (I was circumspect because this project is Toni’s. I’m just one of the foot soldiers. The glory and renown belong to the general.) My 82% includes an estimated 2% on-the spot improvs I came up with to get out of a jam.
Why a jam? Because early on in this project I declared that I would not be repeating fills between motifs. A flower could have multiple petals in the same pattern, or a bug might have matching wings in a single pattern, but once that pattern hit the cloth and the motif was completed, it was “burned” and not used again on the rest of the piece. That made some anxious moments because there are A LOT of shapes to fill, especially small jelly bean sized ones. More than once I made an inadvertent duplication and rather than ripping out the work, had to mod the second showing so it would be distinct. Or I had to fill a particularly challenging tiny spot, and just winged it because nothing I had would show well there.
What’s Left to Do:
Taming this shameful back. Mostly tacking down those annoyingly fraying gold ends, to the best of my ability. Then hemming to the final dimensions required for display. Nothing fancy, no drawn work hems or anything like that.
And of course the second post in this series. But for now, off to lion tame my dandelion mat of frizzy gold ends.
EVEN MORE ON AZEMMOUR
Yet another post only a stitching nerd will love.
Remember a while back, I pulled together some observations on the Azemmour Cluster? That’s a group of embroideries, usually known as fragments rather than whole cushions or other items. Those fragments were among the bits largely collected during the era of the Grand Tour (roughly 1870s up through World War I and on to the 1920s) when monied folk would do a season in Europe, collecting artworks and other items of interest. Needlework and lace collection were among those passions, along with other more traditional forms of art. Those gleaningss eventually landed in museums.
Since needlework fragments are not among the items most highly prized in museum collections, many remained in storage cabinets, with the donor’s provenance notes unchallenged. Or they did until museums began photographing these holdings both for their own use, and to post on line. At that time many of the attributions came under scrutiny, and did not hold up. In the past thirty-plus years I’ve been nosing these up, comparing them and making notes I’ve seen dozens of museum tags specifying stitches, dates, and places of origin change.
Among these collected and sometimes reclassified pieces were items in what some call the Azemmour Cluster. They were scraps sold to unwitting tourist-collectors as genuine late Medieval through Renaissance artifacts. But in actuality it does look like a lot of them, and a lot of the most represented designs in those museum back room cabinets, were produced in Morocco, with many dating to the late 1700s at the earliest, but most were likely made in the 1800s.
To be fair, the designs DO look like they express Renaissance roots. In the post above I even point out a piece that looks like it may be a predecessor. The Moroccan connection was known for some of these. Frieda Lipperheide in Old Italian Patterns for Linen Embroidery does point out that origin for some strips, noting their similarity to Italian designs.
Well, thanks to discussions in the Zoom meetings that are part of the Unstitched Coif project, a significant arguments strengthening the joint Moroccan sojurn of these designs has come to my attention.
Here are two samplers from the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection. The images are theirs used here under fair use/academic auspices. The multicolor one is Accession T.35-1933, a 19th century piece from Morocco, stitched in silk on linen. Yes, most of the individual fragments of these designs are in monotone, usually red, but occasionally deep indigo, these two samplers with their collections of many designs are happy riots of color.
This black and white photo is also of a multicolor piece (Accession 372-1905), dated from the 1800s, and is also listed as of Moroccan origin.
Both of these pieces contain two of the most common motifs in the cluster. This one is what I call the Spider Flower, for its spindly center blossom.
Here’s the second. I call it Wide Meander. This is found both with the wide strip looking rather sea-monster like with a gaping mouth, and in a tamer form, where the monsters have fused to become a super-wide belt like meander join. Discussions of both Wide Meander and Spider Flower are in my previous Azemmour post. Earlier musings on the Spider flower are here.
But these are not the only ones. The multicolor photo also has these two designs on it that I’ve discussed before.
The one on top is a variant of a pattern that is of Italian provenance. I mention it in this piece, and again in my discussion of voided grounds (under the boxed fill).
The one underneath I call the Pomegranate Meander. It’s clearly related to the Spider Flower, although in this case the ornaments on the joining diagonals are emphasized, rather than the center flower shape. It’s also mentioned in the Azemmour discussion cited earlier.
Plus it’s also worth noting that both of these V&A samplers show lots of variants of the customary accompanying borders so often seen with these main strip designs.
But for me the eye opener was the addition of another design to the group. Both samplers show the wide urn design.
This one I should have tweaked to based on the style of detail in the foreground. But I did graph it up for The Second Carolingian Modelbook based on this example from the Hermitage Museum, and accepted their identification as Italian, 16th to 17th century. Accession T-2714, entitled “Border Embroidered with Bowl and Stylized Plant Motifs” if the link breaks).
Here is my own rendition of this design, as I stitched it on my long green sampler.
Now we have a conundrum. We have many items whose dates and places have been corrected in museum collections. We have a continuing tradition of design replication and pattern re-use in a specific place. We have some predecessor designs and traditions that might have fed the Moroccan styles. And we even have some evidence of the post-Inquisition diaspora spreading these stitching styles TO settlements in Morocco. The Jewish link is cited by The Textile Museum of Canada. The Jewish Virtual Library notes the migration and community. The Jewish link is also mentioned here. The Textile Research Centre writes that production of Azemmour pieces died out in the mid 1900s, although recent revivals have been undertaken.
So where do we draw the line? Are these related items ALL to be reassigned to the Azemmour Cluster, with production dates in the 1700s through 1800s, sold to the unsuspecting as older artifacts? Are some possibly earlier, transitional pieces? Can we rely on just the wealth of ornament in the foreground of these strips to differentiate them from earlier forbearer pieces? Without detailed textile forensics, we may never know. But wherever and whenever their points of origin, it’s nice to see the family reunited again.
HALF A BIRD AND MORE ON WORKING METHOD
This poor little bird at the top had the bad happenstance of appearing on the edge line of the Unstitched Coif outline cartoon. He’s been horizontally bisected. I felt bad for him so I used an especially playful fill on his body.
Obviously I’m still soldiering on.
No doubt about it, 2×2 countwork on 70+ thread per inch linen moves along slowly. But I am about to hit two major milestones. The first is 50% completion. That’s just a couple of flower sprigs away. The second is consumption of my first full 100 meter spool of Au Ver a Soie’s Soie Surfine – the ultra-fine silk I am using for the fills. I have more than enough in reserve to continue on, so no supply side worries loom.
I’m now pretty well adapted to the magnifiers, but even so a forehead break every 20 minutes or so is needed. The headband mount stays seated in my optimum viewing range longer and and accommodates use of my usual bifocals, much better than using the glasses frame “arms.” Neither is comfortable, but I’ll pick discomfort + better sight every time.
I do wish that the magnifier would eat batteries more slowly. I only use the supplemental LEDs on the magnifier when working actual countwork in suboptimal light conditions. I don’t need the extra illumination when working the outlines or doing the goldwork and spangles. But even so, one set of three tiny coin batteries lasts for only about four days of stitching – roughly 14 to 16 hours. If I had a do-over I’d buy something with the same magnification levels, but that came equipped with a rechargeable light source. It would be very handy to plug it in each night and be ready for the next day’s stitching.
I still haven’t repeated fills between sprigs or insects (with one tiny exception). Folk have asked where I’ve gotten them, and how I use them (planning/choice and execution).
The sources for the fills I’ve used include the set painstakingly drafted out by our Fearless Leader, from close observation of select Actual Artifacts in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s collection. She has provided them as part of the tool set for this project. But I have to admit that the overwhelming majority of the fills I have used come from my own doodle notebooks, including the Ensamplario Atlantio series. Others I’ve improvised as I stitched, noodling up something unique to fill a difficult to render petal or bug body segment.
I reiterate that I am not sitting down and planning placements ahead of time. Nor am I drawing out the shapes on paper, then penciling in fills and stitching from those plans. I’m deciding on them as I come upon the spaces. Occasionally I get to a flower and say, “Hmm. Six segments, I can do six fills, three fills twice, or two fills three times.” Then I pick a treatment, and go looking for the first fill. In general I start with the largest segment of the design, pick something demonstrative for that space – roughly centering placement of the design by eye and working out from there; then select designs for the accompanying spaces to contrast or compliment. Take the Borage flower, for example:
I started this one by doing the big leaf with the interlace fill. That one is from my doodle notebooks. It’s a grand fellow, and one of my favorites. I was waiting for a suitably large space to use it, so in it went. And no, I didn’t mind that it would be partly overworked with gold for the veins. It’s bold enough to stand up to that treatment.
Next I turned to the flower itself, starting with the largest downward extending petal in the center. I used one of the fills provided by the project leader, graphed from V&A accession T.230-1929, a sampler of fill designs. It’s six from the end on this page. It’s repeat is smaller than that in the leaf, but it still needs room to play. I also chose it because I liked the way its spiky linearity contrasted with the closed, boxy interlace nearby.
While I was working the first petal, I decided to divide the flower into a set of three petals, two petals, and four petal/sepals, and shade them so the set of four would be the darkest, and “recede” to the back. I worked the other two petals of the three-set with the same design I just completed, then went looking for a lighter, less dense one for the two-set, ending up with another from my doodle notebooks. It’s light and airy, and quite quick to stitch up. Although it uses a lot of lines and has squares, it is a nice complementing contrast with the first design, and it had enough space to let the design show. It was clear with these five petals done that the four-set would need to be significantly darker and smaller, but I didn’t want to do a tiny repeat because I’m saving those for the many-tiny-petals Marigold flowers. I found a small, dense one, again from my doodles.
With all of the petals done, I thought that a darker center “cone” was in order. I pawed through the project collections and my notebooks but didn’t see anything tasty, so I just improvised this final fill, starting with the familiar cross and circle base, and adding detail until I got the density I wanted. (I did add it to my current notes, though.) The feel of it is almost the opposite of the star-like fill I used in the four-set petal/sepals. Once the final fill was completed, I went back and worked the black raised outline in reverse chain, using two separable strands of a thicker four-strand silk floss, hand dyed by a friend of mine (a softer black from a historically accurate iron/tannin recipe).
On to the bud. All three of the designs I used in it are from my notebooks, although the bud design is very common, and a feather-line variant of it is in the project’s collection of designs from V&A Accession T.82-1924 (a cushion cover). Again, I picked three in ascending density from the base to the bud tip, looking for ones that contrasted both in tonal value and in composition. As per usual, the outlines were last.
The small paisley at the sprig’s base was last. Originally I had intended to use its fill elsewhere, but I decided to employ it as a stand-alone because it is Very Special. It’s from the project collections, drawn from V&A Accession T.12-1948 (a coif) by our Fearless Leader. It’s third from the end on this page.
It’s special because of the stitches used to form the center X in the double stirrup shaped motifs. Those are two 1 unit by 2 unit stitches, crossing in the center. I call them “knight’s move” stitches. They are vanishingly rare in historical count work, appearing most often as a component of eyelet type constructs, where many stitches radiate from a single center hole. But stand-alone? This is the FIRST time I’ve encountered one on an actual artifact or contemporary pattern graph. Yes, they are quite common in modern blackwork and strapwork because they add an angle to the designer’s toolbox. It’s a very useful and graceful angle that many designers employ to excellent effect (especially Banu Demirel of Seba Designs), but to my eye, they produce a different overall look and are a clear marker of modern design. So finding one here was like being slapped Monty Python style, with a flounder.
I shared the observation with our group leader, who I am sure is now on the lookout for other knight’s move examples. Until there’s a whole vocabulary of them though, I will view this fill as the exception that proves the rule, and continue to eschew anything but 45- 90- and 180- degree angles in my own design work.
Once all of the fills and their black outlines were done, I added the gold. First I couched down the doubled gold of the flower’s petal lines. Then doubled gold for the leaf veins/stems. I affix them all with small stitches of gold color faux silk. Leaf veins that meet up with stems are done as one length, with that center line being laid down first. I add the “crossbars” by teasing them underneath the centerline using a tiny thread crochet hook, then couching down their arms. Once all he double-strand work is done I add the single-strand gold curls. The final step is to whip JUST the stem portions of the sprig with two strands of the same Soie Surfine I am using single stranded for the fills. Those black stitches are not structural. They are just for effect, binding the flowers and leaves together and uniting the sprig and make it stand out from the ever encroaching flood of paillettes/spangles.
And yes, I will go back and add the gold curl at the tip of the paisley. But it encroaches too closely on neighboring design elements, and I don’t want to catch it as I stitch those. So it will be added later.
I hope this answers the questions about my “bungee jump” approach to this large and complex project. As with any such banquet, taking lots of small bites is a fun way to graze across the entire spread.
YET ANOTHER BLACKWORK PATTERN INTERPRETATION
A big thank you to the Facebook/Blogspot guru who posts at Attire’s Mind. Today he posted a painting from the collection of the National Gallery of Art, (Accession 1931.1.114 in case the links break). It’s a devotional image by Giovanni Battista Morini, and is entitled “A Gentleman in Adoration before the Madonna.” It’s dated to 1560.
The Attire’s Mind post called out the blackwork on cuffs and collar.
Of course I was smitten with the pattern and had to graph as close an approximation of it as I could. It’s got a bit of interpretation, but given that the original I am working from is paint and not countable linen, I think that relying on best-effort/logical construction that achieves the motifs using the least real estate is good enough.
This one is especially interesting because it looks like the artist went out of his way to depict two line thicknesses. These could have been achieved by using different stitches, or by varying thread thickness. I’ve tried to convey that look by using two line thicknesses in my chart. Experimentation with how to render this in real stitching would be lots of fun.
Now, I could save this along for eventual publication in The THIRD Carolingian Modelbook, which I’ve already begun compiling, but given my dismal track record of decade-plus production for each of that series’ two prior volumes, why wait?
You can click here to download this as an easy single page PDF file
It’s also available on my Embroidery Patterns page. Enjoy!
CRAWLING ALONG
My sort-of-weekly progress and lessons learned post about my Unstitched Coif entry. So you can see what’s new, I post the last general update photo alongside the new one:
I’ve added the rose, several bugs and a couple of leaves, a partial rose at the bottom edge, worked more of the stems and curls in gold, and seeded in more of the sequins once surrounding motifs were defined. I’m working on another leaf right now. And this means that I am almost finished with the first of the three tiled pattern print-outs. I’ll be moving onto the center sheet in the next day or so.
Obviously I am determined to make that completion deadline. I’ve been trying to stitch at least four hours per day, sometimes more if I can. Although we absconded to our place on Cape Cod for a long weekend, and I took my stitching with me. And there I had a grand time sitting out on our deck, working away in shaded sunshine and light airy breeze. Not too hot, and not too windy. (Thanks to the Resident Male for these live action photos).
It’s a bit easier to see in the following photo – I keep my left hand underneath and my right hand on top. I’m right hand dominant, but probably less so than many right-handers. My left is quite well trained at this point.
You can also see the magnifiers. I’ve found that they get less tangled in my hair if I wear them over a kerchief, rather than putting the headband directly over my pinned up braids. Yes, that’s one of the blackwork forehead cloths I stitched several years ago. It has worn like iron, surviving many washes, but I do now understand why forehead cloths are so often found bereft of their strings. This is the thing now, on its second set of strings (strips of linen, double folded and hand sewn), and this set is beginning to fray. Also note how the formerly crisp on grain right-angle triangle has changed shape under the stress of being worn. Another feature often seen in museum examples. More on the ones I made and the one I interrupted to do this blackwork project here.
In any case back to the Coif project.
As I’ve written before, stitching outside in bright but not direct light is amazingly better than stitching under the best available indoor lighting. A full spectrum lamp comes close, but even that can’t equal the absolute clarity evoked by outdoor ambient light. I will be working on my porches back at home, front or back, weather and heat willing for the best part of the day from now on.
The second thing is that hideous, tattered dark color pillowcase, pinned on to the top edge of my work, and hanging down behind. I have two – both way to destroyed for their original use. I use them as a double layer travel cover for this frame when I take it along with me. The travel cover I sewed is too small for this frame at max extension with lacing.
The reason it’s there is to limit light shining through the work. Unneeded light includes reflected light outdoors, light from the TV (often on while I stitch when I work indoors), or from other window or artificial sources when I am trying to stitch with my full spectrum light over my shoulder. Even outdoors with the sun behind me, having the dark “curtain” behind the work makes it just a tad easier to see the threads and aim accordingly.
I finish up with a detail shot of the creeping caterpillar. He’s my favorite insect on the piece, but he was surprisingly tough to do. There isn’t a lot of real estate in those heart-shaped body segments. I tried to find fill patterns that would contrast nicely both in tone and “spikey-ness”, and still be somewhat distinguishable in those tiny areas. I ended up using three – one for the face, and two alternating, for the rest of the body. The eyes are always fun. Where possible I’ve been using the same 2mm paillettes that spangle the ground for eyes, held on with French knots. Do you feel seen?
For the record, with one unconscious lapse (a repeat of plain squared fill in two tiny places), I have NOT yet duplicated a fill between design elements. A fill might appear twice in the same flower, creature, or leaf, but once that design element is done, I consider its fills “burned” and will try very hard not to use any of them again. That means even if a bug or flower repeats in the drawing, each iteration will have its own unique look. Or so I hope…
ENSAMPLARIO ATLANTIO – UPDATED
Back in 2011 I issued Ensamplario Atlantio – my first doodle notebook full of fill designs for inhabited blackwork. Many of those designs are also suitable for use as an all-over design or strip pattern. Back then many people had to cope with bandwidth restrictions which made downloading a larger file problematic. So I cut the book up into four pieces to mitigate the problem. Now in 2023, that need has passed.
I’ve taken the original book, corrected some mistakes and typos, added four new pages (24 individual designs), and stitched it back into one single file. Ensamplario Atlantio, Second Edition is now up and available for free download. Having the thing in one piece should make using it easier. And it will make keeping track of it easier for me.
So please click here to download and enjoy!
The sequel, Ensamplario Atlantio Volume II, with 200 more patterns including fills, bands, and yoke designs is also still available as a free download.
TIME CAPTURED
More progress on the Unstitched Coif project.
As for “Time Captured” – that’s what this piece is. Time ensnared by thread.
That raven-like bird took about six hours to stitch. The big carnation at the lower right took roughly 18, exclusive of its stem, leaf and tendrils. I took my first stitch on the coif on 16 April. A little over 7 weeks ago. I’d estimate that over those seven weeks I’ve put in between two and five hours a day stitching. The average is probably around 4 hours. So by conservative estimate, what you see here is over 225 hours of my time. And looking at the whole piece, I’m only about 20% complete. I’ve got to speed this up if I want to hit the deadline for submission to the exhibit. Oh, and for the person who brusquely offered to buy my coif when it’s done, I point out that I only have one rate for my time – my fully burdened professional hourly consulting rate. I hope you are prepared to spend in the six figures.
But I’m not complaining about the time spent. Every second has been fun, and a good deal of it has been spent “in the zone” where tedium and cares do not exist. For that it is a remarkably efficient source of centered self-therapy, that I am enjoying immensely.
And all in all, I am pleased with what I’ve put on the cloth. With the exception of the simple boxed filling for Big Bug’s head, which I also used for one petal in the half carnation at the top edge, I haven’t repeated any fills. I’m happy with the mix of light/dark; dense/sparse; and curved/angled fills. There’s one fill done at 3×3 threads, the first leaf I did, but it’s not a glaring problem and I won’t bother reworking it to the same 2×2 thread scale as the rest of the piece.
A few of the paillettes might have been better placed, but I’m not going to take the time to do it. I still need to add gold accents to the viola flower in the center, and to the wings of the largest insect. And I am considering picking out the gold bug antennae and bird feet. While they looked great before the great spangle-flood, they do get a bit lost amidst all the bling. If I do that, now is the time. There are only four bugs and two birds, with lots more to come in the remaining 80% of the piece left to go.
Working with the gold has been a challenge. It’s unruly, for starters. I had hoped to do one of the narrower Elizabethan plaited stitches for the stems and tendrils, but after blowing my budget on the Official Linen Ground, I couldn’t justify the expense of the amount of passing thread I would probably need, or the cost of “auditioning” several alternatives before I hit on the one best suited for the project. So I stash-dived and made do with the Japanese Imitation Gold #5 I bought and used for my Two Fish project. (The same project that introduced me to the 2mm spangles).
I tried, but couldn’t get the Gold #5 to work properly as a passing thread on this closely woven, fine ground. The metal strip around the outside unraveled and shredded, exposing the inner silk core. So I resorted to couching, and even that can be problematic.
While working it single or double stranded around the curves isn’t easy, it’s much easier if I employ the natural bend of the stuff instead of working against it. It tends to curl in one particular direction, and have a tighter bend radius in that direction. So I try to lay the thread to take advantage of it’s natural directionality.
Plunging – taking the ends of the stiff, couched gold from the front to the back of the work – can present problems. It’s especially difficult for tiny lengths of the gold, like the ones I did on the aforementioned antennae.
In plunging, you thread a “service needle” with a looped length of sturdy thread. You insert the service needle at the point where you wish the gold to end, catch the gold thread’s tail with the service needle’s loop, gently draw it tight, then make a short, sharp yank on the service needle, using the loop to pull the thread through to the back.
Above are two of the needles I use for this, with both the tiny #12 blunt point beading needle I’m using to stitch the fills, and the US and UK pennies I use for scale. I experimented with several, including larger tapestry needles before picking these. Not sure what they are, though. I found an unmarked paper of six of them in a box of assorted needlework oddities I found at a yard sale. The extremely smooth eyes plus is a bit of tiny variation in the size of the eyes and taper among them, which makes me think they might have been hand-finished, but I’ll never know. The polyester carpet thread I use for the plunging loop is extremely strong.
And an action sequence. At left, inserting my gargantuan needle into the spot where I want the gold to terminate. You can see how huge it is in comparison to the ground cloth weave. I go slowly, with the intent of pushing the weave threads aside, and not piercing them. The tail I am about to hide is the vertical bit adjacent to the plunge point. In the center, I’ve lassoed that tail and pulled it through my super-size, distended hole. The size of the hole helps avoid abrading and shredding the gold thread’s outer layer. And at right, the final result. I’ve used the tip of the plunging needle to ever so gently, stroke the ground cloth threads back into position. You’d never know that I had opened up a yawning crater there.
Why show all of this? Well, first to help those who might be considering using gold thread, but have had problems sewing with it. At no point in this process is my gold passed through the eye of a needle, nor is it dragged repeatedly through the cloth to form stitches. I hold it on the surface of my work, and use a needle with yellow silk to make tiny silk stitches, affixing the gold to the ground. I leave about a half inch (roughly 1.5 cm) gold tail when I begin my line of couching, then snip off the excess when I am done, leaving a tail of about the same length at the terminal end. Then I plunge both.
Second, to help explain why I am thinking of re-doing the bug antennae. Those are teeny tiny bits, most not even as long as the tails I leave to end off. No matter how tightly I stitch the yellow couching thread, about 75% of the time the act of plunging itself rips the whole bit of gold through the exit hole, right out of its affixing threads. It’s a major pain and production bottleneck. So in addition to those tiny bits visually disappearing into the spangled ground, I have great motivation for cutting that bit of detail from the rest of the work. I will replace it with the same simple reverse chain stitch in black silk that I used for the rest of the outlines.
Now to work up the courage to perform the surgery…
THE UNSTITCHED COIF TAKES A ROAD TRIP
Obviously I am still working on the Unstitched Coif project, and have a bit of progress over the past week or so. I might have had more, but we went to visit family in Buffalo, New York (about a 7.5 hour drive from Boston if you make no stops), and were too busy over the five days for me to steal more than an hour or two to stitch. We did have a great time, and got lots done – just not stitchy stuff.
I will report though that working outside in bright sunlight, even when sitting in the shade is the best illumination I’ve found. For those who look at fine stitching and wonder how folk in the pre-indoor lighting eras did it by firelight, candlelight, or tucked up next to a window, I would suggest that relying on natural sunshine is not a handicap at all, although it is time-limited by its very nature.
Yes, I am sitting in my mother-in-law’s garden, working the design upside-down. It’s upside-down for no other reason than when I first put my frame in the stand it happened to be in that orientation. I’ve just continued on that way. When work on the next vertical swath I may flip it over, but for now I’m just marching to the edge, which is now only a few design elements away.
Here are two clear progress shots, first showing the whole area I’ve done (about half of the first pattern sheet as displayed magnet-tacked to my work, above). Plus a detail shot of the latest bits.
A second, larger bird has joined the first, along with the multi-petal flower with its leaf, the rather odd looking columbine (the bit with the three gold petal ends) and some of the foliage, curls, and spangles that surround them. I’m now working on the first of two large grape leaves below the columbine. This area features some larger shapes to fill and I am having lots of fun with them by using some larger, more complex fills. The interlace currently being worked in the grape leaf looks complicated, but once the rhythm of the thing is started, it’s really quite logical.
And I am still on target for not repeating a fill between units. With one tiny exception, while the same fill design may appear more than once in a pattern element like a flower or a bug where a design may inhabit more than one petal or body segment, once that element is done I consider that fill to be “burned” and have not repeated it again. I suspect this will be more of a challenge as I move along, especially in the smallest spaces where there is little play for the more complex repeats.
In any case, I wish I were further along, but I’m also pleased with the progress to date. Gotta stitch faster, I guess…
LONG-LOST TWINS, PART VII
Today’s my birthday, and needlework friend Barbara posted a snippet to my Facebook feed of a voided panel showing couples dancing. That bit of fun led to more digging on my part. I knew of similar panels in a couple of places, so I decided to do another of these posts that only a needlework geek could love.
First, here’s the one that was most prominent in my notes. It’s in the collection of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), accession 47.199. They attribute it as Italian, circa 1600, and cite both the ground and the stitching as being cotton. I have some doubts about the materials citation, but I’m not an expert and haven’t seen the piece up close and personal. I do note however that it would be one of the two easiest examples of this family to chart.
It’s hard to see, but the ground appears to be in that tightly pulled Meshy stitch I’ve written about before. I do not know if the foreground and outlines are done in double running or back stitch. There’s no other info on working method or object purpose. But I sort of suspect that this might have been part of household decor – possibly a bed valence or decorative cover sheet, remotely possible – a tablecloth, but for that I would expect to see a butted corner, and not the arbitrary unworked bit at the extreme right of the stitching. It is interesting to see the tease that confirms my working method – there’s a tiny bit of the foliage on the “room divider” at the right edge that was outlined, but the voiding wasn’t worked up and around that little bit of outline, leaving it orphaned and alone. More argument for this having been displayed with that selvedge bit tucked away and unseen, as I would expect for the upper hanging around a bed.
In any case, here are some relatives. First a piece from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, accession 38.1104. They cite it as 16th century, and Italian, worked in red silk on linen. Looks like the Meshy background to me.
You can see that the design is very close, but isn’t spot on exact. There is a different treatment of detail in both the foliage divider and the castle tower divider. The border (if there was one) is also gone, but we can’t judge that in absentia. There are also lots more small bits and bobs surrounding the dancers and the little guy in the RISD sample. The male figure has traded his crowned turban-line hat for a lush head of hair. And the little guy looks to be better dressed. I’d be tempted to call him a page in this version and possibly a cupid or eros figure in the RISD piece, due to the bit of arrow fletching? sticking up over his shoulder. And although I haven’t counted the units, or investigated closely enough to see if the thread count of the two grounds are even, the MFA’s snippet does seem to be a bit compressed north-south, compared to the RISD one. But not uniformly so. The upper bodies appear to be less squished than their lower halves.
And the third – this one from the Cleveland Museum of Art, Accession 1929.840. They note their piece as being done in silk on linen. It’s pretty clear that this one is in Meshy, too.
Based on very strong similarity between this piece and the MFA holding, I suspect these might have been true siblings, pieces from the same original, cut apart and sold to two separate collectors, which then ended up in two different museum collections. In fact if you compare the right edge of the MFA piece, and the left edge of this one we can see a bifurcated page boy – it is pretty likely that we are looking at the exact snip line where they were separated. As an aside, I like the little unfinished bit underneath the lower left leaf of the foliage divider, at the left edge of the piece. Again, confirmation that outlines were laid down first, then the background was worked.
This one is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, accession 47.40. They call it “Border” and cite it as being Italian, and 17th century, worked in silk on linen.
Their original photo is a bit fuzzy, but it’s pretty clear that this piece is possibly another section of the same original that furnished the RISD snippet. Not only are the borders and proportions intact, but the small details of crown/hat, arrow, interior detail on the dividing motifs, and even the dress border of the woman dancer is identical.
And to wrap up, I have one more snippet in my notes. This is also from the MET collection, accession 07.62.58. They cite it as Italian or Greek, 17th century, and note that it’s silk on linen. They rightly describe the meshy ground as drawnwork.
By now you should be familiar with the details of this design. Yes – it looks closer to the CMA and MFA snippets than it does to the RISD and the other MET holding. But there are some subtle differences. The ground line is most obvious. In the other two non-bordered bits of this variant, the stitchers have taken more pains to keep a stable bottom edge of the stitching. That’s not to say there aren’t deviations from that on both pieces, but on this one is is far more evident. There are also some other minor differences in detail on the dividers and on the dancers’ outfits. Now I suspect that it was not uncommon for a very large project like a set of bed hangings to be worked by multiple stitchers. Even if a master laid down the outlines and had a crew working “clean-up” behind, filling in background and detail, a large team working quickly might make these minor copyist errors. I don’t think that there is enough difference here to clearly claim that this has no chance of being a piece of the same original as the CMA and MFA fragments.
So to sum up, I do think that two original artifacts furnished all of these bits. And I would go further to posit that the unbordered one might have even been unfinished prior to its dismemberment. I thank the collectors of the “Indiana Jones” era for heading off on their Grand Tours, and bringing back these pieces. I thank the museums for hanging onto these rarely studied snippets, and for posting photos of them on line, so we can speculate about their origin. And I thank Barbara for flagging the dancers for my birthday.
I return you now to regularly scheduled, non-boring Internet content. 🙂
FIRST BUGS, NOW BIRDS
I’m edging into a new neighborhood on the Unstitched Coif Project. This one is inhabited by birds. The first one is stitched and I’m thinking on the fills for the second. You can see him at the center bottom of the piece, now presented in the correct orientation.
I think he looks a bit like a tiny raven, A slightly confused one at that. I could not resist the visual pun of using the feather fill from the collection presented at the official website for his body. You can make out another oddly shaped bird sketched in below and to the right of the pansy/viola flower.
All in all, I’m pleased with the way this is turning out, although like all participants, I wish my project was proceeding faster. Working so tiny is taxing. Mr. Raven for instance took about four hours to complete, counting the fills, outlining, sequin eye, and couched gold feet.
My game of not repeating fills between units is still afoot, although I am finding it harder and harder to find or devise fills for the particularly tiny areas, like the sepal-leaves on the pansy. And I have to go back and add lighter gold banding the the wings of the big bug.
One more challenge is that of adding the overstitched elements – the couched vein leaves and feather markings on Mr. Raven. I do the fills first, then neaten up their edges with the heavier outlines. But the fills obscure the placement of the overstitching. I do that by eye, referring to a printout of the master design. I’ve mentioned before that others do the outlines first, but with the heavy, embossed reverse chain stitch, working inside tiny spaces would be extremely difficult. I leave that to those who are using outline stitch, freehand fills, and speckling.
Today’s agenda will be filling out the spray of leaves at the (now) right edge, adding the gold stems to it, and flooding the few newly surrounded white space areas with spangles.
In other news, last weekend I visited Younger Spawn and surrendered the bespoken Eyeball Bolster Cushion, seen here in its forever home, on the target low back mid-century modern sofa for which it was designed. A perfect fit. The recipient was totally thrilled.
The sharp-eyed will spot my stitching set up near the sunny window. I added a hex wrench to my stitching kit, and can take the thing including the disassembled stand with me when I am on walkabout.
While I was out in Spawn’s neighborhood we went to a garden center/plant nursery. Spawn added to the resident collection of exotic houseplants that make the apartment a livable and calming oasis. I noticed that the prices for large, healthy outdoor plants were much lower there in the suburban Albany/Troy New York area than they are here in the outskirts of Boston, so I bought some plants to augment my growing perennial collection. Here they are, just before I plonked them into their spots.
The big blue pot in back is a Chocolate Eupatorium (aka Joe Pye Weed). It’s a fall bloomer, with white flowers. The white pot in the middle is a red-leafed Astilbe variant, with purple/red flowers in mid to late summer. And the little guy over near the hose is a low-growing creeping sedum, that blooms purple in the fall. They join the transplanted peony, curly leafed Hosta, lemon Hosta, pink Astilbe, and two types of Brunnera (one red leaf, one green) that survived last year’s drought and fierce heat that doomed my Aconitum (wolfbane), and Hellebore. A less poisonous garden this year, but one I hope will outlive my ungentle care.
PRICE ALERT
One last thing – if you are interested in buying my pattern collection The Second Carolingian Modelbook, you may want to do so before 30 June. Amazon Kindle is raising print fees, and because the thing is on a razor thin margin, I will be forced to raise the price. I am sorry for this. I tried hard to keep it under $30.00 US per copy, and it will remain so until the end of June, but after than the price will be going up.
String-Or-Nothing 