TRUE CONFESSIONS
I am very glad that I didn’t focus on making this piece two-sided.
At the outset, I thought about it. Hiding the ends on both Montenegrin Stitch and Meshy (Two-Sided Italian Cross Stitch, pulled tightly) are easy. Lots of real estate overstitched in which both beginnings and endings can be camouflaged. Double running is a bit more difficult, especially when one strand is used. Yes, I know various termination methods to do so – one-strand loop start and waste knots to begin; back-trace stitching, and threading through the existing line to end – but they are annoying to do, especially on a large piece. I made a half-hearted stab at it, but abandoned double sided double running early on, But I never thought it would be the two solid techniques that would be giving me trouble.
Here’s the front:
Here’s the back:
Montenegrin is working well. There are just a couple of bald spots where I lost track, mostly in angle changes. I blame resuming the habit of watching TV while I’m stitching. Occasionally I get caught up in the action, and miss a turn. Then don’t realize it until I am long past. Had I still been reverse-side-display focused, I would have done more diligent checking, and would have ripped back and redone the less than perfect bits.
Meshy on the other hand… Ouch.
The two-sided Italian cross stitch works best over large areas, like backgrounds in voided style pieces. It isn’t as cooperative when its playgrounds are small, as they are in these flower parts. It’s like working nothing but the bits where voided stitching bumps up against a foreground line, with no respite. Working these small parts I never quite get the rhythm – it’s all compensation stitches, with very little chance to display the openwork texture. That also means that coverage on the back gets slighted as working direction changes to adapt to the shape of the field being filled. Add to that the tension limitations of the cotton floss (more fragile than silk, believe it or not), and in spite of cotton’s fluffier nature, we have lots of bald spots on the back. Far from optimal for double sided display.
Finally then there’s my own general laziness. I’ve made a couple of mistakes that I’ve had to pick out. But instead of picking out large areas, I’ve mostly opted to pick out just the “broken” bits, tying off loose ends, or fastening them with overstitching on the back. Most of the fat or knotty looking spots above are from fixing mistakes. Sometimes the errors encroached on Meshy sections, and those are notoriously difficult to frog. Sometimes I ripped out small segments and replaced them because I didn’t feel like re-creating the large, accurate sections they were in, just to get at a couple of errant stitches.
So my back is a relative shambles. I will of course continue on, focusing on the front. But especially for those of you who tell me that my pieces are inhumanly perfect, please know that you usually only see the after photo, and lots of corrections and creative editing went into making the project look like that.
My Italian Fall
No international or domestic tumbles involved. Only, just like that, my fall project begins.
Yes, I am sticking with a project inspired by the big Italian towel/cover in my last post. I’m working it on a much smaller piece – a quotation rather than a full reproduction. I’m using the 19 x 27 inch (48.26 x 68.58 cm) piece of 40-count linen I mentioned earlier. That’s obviously less than the 381.89 x 582.68 inches (970 x 1480 cm) of the original. It’s very hard to make out the stitch or thread count of the original, but it does look like (most of the time) stitches happen over 4 threads. I couldn’t get close enough to get a dimensioned or scale-related photo of a strip, but I can say that I am working over 2×2 threads, and my individual motifs are smaller than on the original.
Although the size makes it a hint at the original, the design snippet I use will be a “larger” representation of the whole than it would have been if I had hit the stitch size of the original. More stitches per inch may make my pattern rendition smaller north/south and east/west, and will allow me to fit more repeats on my smaller cloth. Still nowhere near the repeat scale of the museum piece, though.
Now on to the stitches. I am using Montenegrin for the solid lines of green, red, and yellow. The Amy Mitten booklet Autopsy of the Montenegrin Stitch, Exhumed is invaluable for guidance on the various directional angles and corners needed. I used it before while stitching my long green sampler. It was what got me through the maze of this design:
I chose the squared back version of Montenegrin for the band above, but Mitten presents two versions, and I am using the other with a solid strip back for this one. Mostly for variety, and to see how the two compare.
Another stitch I used on Long Green is also present on this one. I call it “Meshy” but it’s official name is two-sided Italian cross stitch. I am using it for the solid infilling on the flower-like parts. Although it’s not called out in the MFA description, the closeup photos I took clearly show the mesh structure of the stitch, when it is pulled extremely tightly. Because of silk’s tensile strength, it works especially well for this stitch. You can see that mesh at large scale, with all ground threads bundled (none cut), completely covered by the silk in the Meshy part of my long, green sampler:
However, for this piece I’ve chosen DMC cotton floss – one strand. I wanted to work from stash, and to guarantee washability. In retrospect silk might have been a much better choice, allowing greater delicacy over all and a better defined mesh; but it’s pricey, and would be a new purchase. I’m putting off buying imports until a sane US international trade policy manifests.
Cotton doesn’t have the oomph of silk. Yanking on it to maximize the mesh effect can lead to breakage, and its bulk makes the filling more bead-like than lacy, especially in the narrow spaces of this design. Still, it’s not that far from the original, and if I’m careful I can teeter on the edge of destruction without actually shredding the thread. And working the narrow petal shapes in this stitch is proving out to be its own challenge. It shows and works much better in larger, open spaces.
I had toyed with making this truly two-sided. Meshy is two-sided, and the Montinegrin variant I picked has a not-exactly-the-same but close-enough reverse. And double running can be two sided. But I’ve already made enough mistakes and corrected them without pulling everything out (very hard to do with Meshy) that the back is compromised. I will settle for MOSTLY double-sided on this one.
Obviously there’s a ton more to do on this cloth.
I may move it to my largest Millennium scrolling frame. It’s just a hair too wide in its short side dimension (bottom in the photo) to fit on my next-to-largest one. But to do that since I have measured and placed my beginning to maximize the stitched field, I will need to add waste cloth or wide twill tape around the top and bottom. I need to add “real estate” for the scrolling rods to bite. And depending on how much tension I can achieve in the east west direction using my shortest set of extenders, I may want to add some twill to the long edges to accommodate lacing, too. But for now I’ll continue with the hoop. Working with it is much slower, but it is more portable, and I wander around the house quite a bit now as I stitch, to take advantage of changes in sitting venue.
Stay tuned, there will be LOTS more progress reports on this one. I hope they won’t be too boring. The pattern will remain mostly the same throughout the piece, but I do have several challenges coming up. For example, how to handle corners, and how to divide the framed plain linen center using double or single widths of the design. And if I do so, graphing out the supplemental edging sprigs, and how to place and space them.
On the health front, all continues well. Preventive radiation continues. No side effects ill or beneficial so far, although the superpower of magnified vision would come in handy. Mobility, sitting stamina, and general energy levels are increasing. I can make it around the house without a cane now, and only use it for going outside, or up and down the stairs. I’m a lot slower than I used to be, but even slowly, I can now get there. All is good.
AHA!
I’ve finally figured out what to stitch!
Two years ago Friend Merlyn and I went to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and saw an exhibit that featured (among other things) this Italian masterwork.
It’s described as a towel done in Punto Scritto and Punto a Spina Pesce MFA Accession 83.242, Italian, 16th century, silks on linen. In terms of size, this piece is big enough to be a table spread to seat eight, much bigger than anything I’d think of as a bath towel.
These stitch terms are used in MFA descriptions, but not many other places, and probably haven’t been updated since the initial acquisition and accession in 1883. Punto Scritto is clearly double running stitch. Punto a Spina Pesce (as far as I can figure) appears to be what we would call a form of long armed cross stitch (LACS) because the stitches that form each adjacent unit employ the same insertion/emergence spots, although modern stitches using that Italian name appear to spread the entry/exit points out, like herringbone stitch. I also note that the directionality of the individual stitch units as it rounds corners makes me think that execution was most like the Montenegrin stitch variant of LACS (more on this below).
I shared several photos of this at the time of our visit. And I put it on my list for redaction. Well, now is that time. I’m going to chart this one up, and then use the designs on a MUCH smaller cloth of my own. And as I look closer at this one, I think I will try to use a similar range of colors (but in cotton for washability), and the stitches I think look the closest to those of the original. At least on the front. I don’t see any photos of the back on the museum page in order to make totally accurate identifications, and am not impelled to write to request any. One thing I did note is that for the solid filled areas, the tightly pulled two-sided cross stitch variant I call Meshy was used. That isn’t credited on the museum page.
Another thing my close-ups show is that the piece was stitched over squares of four by four threads. There appear to be quite a few mis-hits and subsequent corrections where four by three or three by three threads were covered. This seems to pop up mostly in the curly bits that spring off the lily like flowers. I don’t know the actual count of the ground, and obviously couldn’t get up close enough to take a dimensioned photo, but I think that 2×2 on my 40 count linen will look close to the scale of the original.
Given that the Meshy and double running stitch bits can be done truly double sided, I have to think further on the use of something in the LACS family that is presentable on both sides. I’ll probably settle on Montenegrin. Both front and back of that are presentable, although the front does feature an additional vertical bar. It’s hard to make out on the photos, but some of the solid lines, especially the dark green ones that run the length and width of the piece do seem to sport a bar in places. But the deep yellow bits that run inside the motifs, don’t. Maybe the stitcher, noting the difference between the appearance of the two sides of the stitch chose to use the more open “reverse” on the front for the yellow bits, and what we consider the front of the stitch’s more solid effect for the framing lines. Fortunately, I have both practice with the stitch plus Amy Mitten’s excellent flip book on executing Montenegrin, covering all possible directional angles, so the transitions in this design will be easy, even upside down.
Now off to chart, and once the main motifs are captured, figure out how to compose them into a viable “small snapshot” piece on my 19 x 27 inch (48.26 x 68.58 cm) cut of linen.
DITHERING
I am still not sure what to stitch next. As part of the stash archaeology portion of the planning process, I did a quick rummage through my accumulated threads. And I’ve been collecting them since grade school.
This box holds a mix of all sorts of things. Most date back to about 1966 when I first got an allowance, but it’s mostly full and partial skeins of J&P Coats Deluxe 6-strand embroidery floss and DMC 6-strand embroidery floss. I’ve got some older bits in there, too – legacy from my grandmother Pauline’s stash.
There is also a handful of Madeira 6-strand floss mixed in. I’ve never actually bought that brand, so I suspect it was second-hand stash that was given to me, or that I found at a yard sale. An interesting detail is that Madeira is now known for specialty packaging (in addition to thread quality), but the put-up I have in this scrum is all pull skeins. I can find no information on when the company changed over to the specialty packaging, but I suspect I acquired these stray skeins no later than 1985.
Other oddments include some soutache left over from SCA dresses done in the late 1960s, plus hose spools of variegated color silk (or possibly rayon) machine embroidery thread. They are end spool spoils, discarded as being insufficient for industrial use, but salvaged by my grandmother Minnie (the union seamstress/machine operator) for personal use, before she retired in the mid 1960s.
The oldest in the collection? These.
I have about a dozen different colors of the that JP Coats Deluxe, all with the 10-cent price on the skein band itself, but this indistinct tannish grey one had the clearest label. From the price and the color (purchased to stitch a bunny on a pair of 6th grade jeans), I can say with authority that I bought it in 1968.
The purple one is Lily 6-ply cotton floss, one of the grandma-Pauline-hand-me-downs. Although embroidery floss is still marketed under that name, it hasn’t been made by Lily itself since the 1960s. From the style of the typography on the wrapper, my guess is that this was purchased in the 1950s. The blue skein is Cynthia 6-ply cotton floss. I can find nothing about that brand or the possible maker. Dating again from the typography, I’d say that one is even older than the purple skein, and is another Pauline-leftover.
But that’s not all. In the past 10 years or so I’ve been the recipient of quite a few stashes, as friends and coworkers came into crafts supply inheritances they were not interested in keeping. And I’ve pursued several free trades or secondhand purchases via the local on-line yard sale lists. For example, some of the thread below was tossed in when I bought my second Lowery floor stand.
This material is a jumble of leftovers. Some of it is wound on bobbins (not my preferred system of storage), other is still in the original form factor. Most of it is single or partial skeins. Almost all of it is standard cotton floss, mostly DMC and Anchor. A small amount sparkly fleck special effects thread is mixed in, but no true metallics. There’s also a bit of white-labeled “craft floss” – inexpensive imports sold in multicolor packs at big box crafts stores. That’s best suited for braiding friendship bracelets since it’s usually short staple, and not of proven washability. Of note is that special packaging for Madeira, right there at the center bottom. That’s quality stuff, all full packs, and probably what I would use first of all of this bounty.
Now, my two leading possibilities for ground.
First, a lovely 19 x 27 inch (48.26 x 68.58 cm) piece of 40-count linen – a holiday present from my spawn, who enable me when they can. I’m very impressed by the vendor, whoever it was. Not only is the stuff cut exactly on true, it’s also neatly serged on three sides, with the fourth being selvedge. Usually I have to true the piece and hem myself. From the particular form of the orange stripe and line of blue stitching along the selvedge I think it might be Newcastle linen, but other firms do orange stripes, too.
The candidate on top of the linen is a yet another free trade/adoption acquisition. I have two lengths of this edged narrow weave, both about 6.25 inches x 5 yards (15.87 cm x 4.57 meters). The effective stitching area however is 4.875 inches wide (123.83 cm) due to the fancy brocaded borders.
I had been thinking of doing a squared off blouse yoke with it, but that would work better if the stuff was narrower. I’m not up for doing curtains or edging a trailing hem with this. The width is also a bit problematic for many other uses on clothing. About the only thing I can imagine is running it across the top of two wingspan wide to-the-knee lengths of linen, and fastening it at strategic points to make a peplos-like summer swing top/beach living cover-up. Hmmm… that might just work. And summer wearables should be done in washable thread, not the red silk. I don’t have enough of any one color in my ancient stash of cottons, although I’ve got plenty of black in my current on-deck stash….
So, what am I left with after this open bit of nostalgia and mental dithering?
If the peplos idea doesn’t firm up, I’ll probably prep the linen for stitching – establishing basted edges and center lines for the embroidery, but I’m not sure WHAT to stitch. Inhabited blackwork like the Unstitched Coif? Another randomly composed piece combining bands, motifs, and fills, done at whim (but with no motto)? In the Madeira colors, or in red silk?
Yet another wall hanging. A one of a kind wearable just for me. Decisions, decisions….
Input, other ideas, hoots of derision all gratefully accepted.
PROGRESS CONQUERED!
Finished. All that remains is to add my initials and date in the lower corner(s), frame it, and mail it to the recipients at Vanderbilt Rehab. I will be framing it myself.
I’ll figure out a stock size, get an acid free backing board, maybe a piece of black fabric to put behind the linen to camouflage any stray threads on the back, some short pins, possibly some carpet thread to keep the back neatly laced and tidy, and a simple metal frame. No glass, no mat. But this of course requires a trip to a crafts store like Michaels’, or ordering sight-unseen online. I prefer to select these materials in person. I haven’t tried driving yet, but I can now sit and my right foot is as spry as it ever was. This may be the impetus for the Next Great Step of Independence. Or the Resident Male may deign to give me a lift. We will see…
Lessons learned from this piece (so far) have largely been in silk fiber management. I’ve written before about stretching the vintage Pearsall’s silk by splitting its six from-the-maker plies in half. It worked, although handling the stuff was a challenge.
I had not finger-spun flying filaments before. When the two strands that made up the commercial ply were separated and gently stroked to release the commercial spin, so that they unkinked and straightened out, they were certainly long staple, with the silk fibers running the entire length of the strand and without short fiber fuzz, but they were disassociated into a slightly shredded longitudinal mass. I rotated the new, narrowed strand between thumb and forefinger gently, while holding the other end, to impart new twist. Not enough to make the thing kink up again and knot, but just enough to get it to resemble a single thread. Then I waxed lightly, very lightly, to help set the spin. I didn’t want to compromise the silk’s sheen, and it was too easy to shred the new thread if I held it tightly against the wax with my thumb as I drew it across.
In the photo below the red thread at the bottom is a single “native” ply of my Pearsall’s six ply embroidery floss. Note that it’s structure is two-fold. This one strand is made of two plies of silk spun independently and twisted together. The green thread in the middle is what happened when I “unspun” those two plies. You can see the long staple filament fuzz that resulted. And the blue thread on top is what happens after I finger spun and lightly waxed the fluff. It’s a bit loftier than the original thread, but clearly half as bulky.
The re-spun thread was cohesive, and it handled well enough. It still needed attention and an additional spin or two as I stitched, to keep it as uniform as possible as I worked. Still, you can see spots, especially in the deep indigo that frames the outer border, where I was not entirely successful in maintaining thread spin/loft, and lines look a bit dashed, as thicker journeys completed previous lines laid down with a thinner, more tightly spun thread. But historical samplers have this look, too. Those stitchers, vastly younger than me, were learning to prepare their threads from reeled silk fibers and uniformity was a new skill to learn, and something that was a challenge even for them.
Picking out when I made the inevitable mistake was also a problem. It was too easy to latch onto only part of a strand, and shred the thread when a stitch needed to be removed. So I tried VERY hard not to make any mistakes. I was not always successful, and some waste did occur.
I still have the remainder of these colors, and more. I am not sure when I will get to use the rest of my vintage silk, but it will probably be on smaller, less densely stitched items; and again stretched to make use of every priceless inch.
Now. What’s up next?
I’m not sure. I will investigate my stash tomorrow. I just splurged on a pre-tariff large hank of antique red Au Ver a Soie silk. I want to do something with it. Possibly on leftover fabric from the coif, possibly on something less visually challenging. Maybe inhabited blackwork. Maybe strapwork. But no motto this time. Just a riot of pattern, with no lettering to center.
Or maybe I’ll finally do a faux Mexican style blouse in cottons. I have some well aged four inch wide finished edge cotton evenweave, sort of like the stuff sold for bookmarks but on steroids. It was last sold in the mid-1970s, and I got it in a stash trade a few years back. It would make a nifty base for a heavily stitched square shaped yoke, with a lighter cotton (perhaps muslin) full gathered blouse body below, and small cap sleeves. I might even have enough of the wide evenweave ribbon to edge the body hem, or to do a second blouse if the first one works out well. But instead of using traditional patterns, I might do something unexpected. Possibly one of my dinosaur strips, or the Pegasus strip – maybe even voided. Or something as-yet unseen. Suggestions welcome.
So many possibilities…
TWO COLOR DOUBLE RUNNING STITCH – TWICE THE FUN
As promised, here is a round-up of what I’ve been looking into on double running stitch, done in two alternating colors. First, heartfelt thanks to Melinda Sherbring and the gang over at the Facebook group Historic Hand Embroidery.
I knew I had seen examples of this type of work on samplers, but my own research notes are particularly poor in samplers. I tend to focus on the small fragments of household and body linen that lie quietly and largely unnoticed in museum research collections. Samplers receive far more attention, are often under licensing restrictions or have been fully charted by reproduction houses. So in a fit of laziness (it being vacation) I put out a call to the group and asked for assistance. Many people responded, Melinda especially so, furnishing 85% of the material I will cite below. So copious thanks, Melinda! I bow to your greater expertise on these, and will accept any/all corrections.
First, here’s what I am talking about. Here is a simple graph of a sprig pattern, worked in double running of a single baseline.
Note the alternating color stitches in the baseline. If I were to stitch this, I’d start with black, take that first stitch at the baseline’s left edge, then in double running work the rest of the first flower in black as a detour from my baseline. When I returned to the baseline, I’d continue on to the next black stitch, then I could continue working the whole thread of black until I ran out, carefully counting the units between black flowers. After that I’d start again from the left, filling in the missing green stitch, and taking detours to work the green flowers. Or I could do it the easier way – parking my black threaded needle, taking up a green one, and working green stitches until I got to the first green flower, working that as a detour in the standard manner, and marching on for a few stitches after, then catching up and leapfrogging ahead with the black. Note that using two colors means one will always be traveling along the baseline in the same direction. There is no doubling back to fill in second pass double-running stitches as one can if a single color is used.
After some experimentation, I found the “leapfrog” method far easier, in spite of having to be careful not to snag the parked thread. Less long distance counting means fewer errors for me. I suspect that close examination of encroachment on these historical pieces will turn up that leapfrogging was the way they did it, too. It’s just so intuitive and so much simpler.
One more observation – an alternating baseline is a giveaway that the band was done in double running. It would be quite awkward and wasteful of thread to achieve this effect in back stitch. And using back stitch to do the branching detour sprigs would mean having to terminate the thread on each one, or stranding over to return to the baseline. Again, something wasteful to be avoided.
Examples
Melinda provided far more than these photos, but I am cherry picking the ones with details that display the best. Click on the sampler institution/accession/date link to see the full pieces. A couple more of Melinda’s citations are at the end of this post, for those who want to do their own deep dive.
Ashmolean WA2014.71.3 (1631-1700) The boxers/urns panel has a companion border at the bottom with alternating pink/blue sprigs and a clear two-tone baseline. There’s also another pair of companion borders at the bottom that uses a band of green stitching with the alternating color sprigs and two-tone baseline immediately along its edge:
Ashmolean WA2014.71.27 (mid 1600s) has the alternating color sprigs on a two-color baseline on the topmost motif. This is the one I dimly remembered from tiny illustrations in a sampler book. Note that additional satin stitching was done in the centers of the motifs to bring extra dimensionality and color, but the double running outlines are still there.
Burrell 31.7 (1640-1670) Sadly, no high resolution image. But on the bottom-most strip – its framing border, top and bottom strongly looks like two-tone sprigs, and probably has an alternating baseline but it’s hard to make out the detail on the baseline. More investigation on my part needed. As an aside, it’s nice that the Burrell gives thread counts for the linen ground – 28 warp x 25 weft per cm, or 71.12 x 63.5 threads per inch. I’ve included the main strip because it or a close sibling pops up in connection with alternate two-tone borders in other works.
Burrell 31.9 (1640-1670) Third strip from the bottom. Again, certain ID limited by photo quality, but it does look like that much wider strip was done with a two-tone WIDER baseline (same spirit as mine, but a different pattern), with alternating color detours. Shares a lot of the aesthetic and some bands with Burrell 31.7 – interesting!
Cooper Hewitt 1981-28-70 (1600s) Love their high resolution photos. Another clear hit. The companion border around the bottommost wide strip, for sure – done in at least THREE colors (wow!) with a multicolor baseline and single color sprigs. A green, a blue, and possibly a red and a pink, the red and pink are very much faded. Or it might just be green, blue, and pink. It’s very hard to parse but it does look like the baseline was done in pink-green-red-blue-pink-green-red-blue, which would leave very long skips, overlapping on the reverse. I’d love to see the back to confirm that, and to confirm the number of colors.
There are more possibilities on this same piece, but for the most part they are heavily overstitched in satin stitch or (possibly) hollie point or another detached looping/weaving stitch, worked on the outline and for the most part obscuring it. It also looks like the second color was not necessarily used on the double running stitch outline for the sprigs, but was employed in the fill treatment Here’s one with an alternating baseline of blue and pink(?). The pink looks like it was used to outline the acorn and leaf shapes with double running. Pink and green were used for the detatched stitch fills for the acorn and leaf, but the blue of the baseline seems to have ben employed to fill the twigs between the acorns and leaves.
Fitzwilliam T.59-1928 (circa 1680) I stumbled across this one looking for the other items Melinda cited. I saw tiny black and white photo of this in one of the first embroidery history books I borrowed from the library – a book published before 1965 or so. I charted some of the strips from it with a magnifying glass, and used them on a piece I did in high school, long before I found the SCA. I haven’t seen this piece since. (People looking to chart now have no idea how much easier it is today with on line access to zillions of primary sources and high resolution photos, all of which can be enlarged right on the screen. A far cry from being smuggled into university libraries to stare at fuzzy microfiche images, or taking magnifying glasses to low quality black and white photos in books.) There is clearly a two-tone companion border with an alternating color baseline accompanying the prominent rose band:
By way of contrast, this bit from the same sampler was NOT done with a two-tone baseline. Even if there are pink straight stitches between the green diamonds and other motifs in the uniting center band, those sprouting leaves in pink are independent from the true baseline, which is solid, unbroken green.
Fitzwilliam T.61-1928 (1677) Also stumbled upon, and sadly a bit blurry. Two possibilities in the photo below – and the lower wide border to which one of the candidates is the companion one looks to a design that’s a cousin to the one from the Burrell sampler above. The two-tone companion is clearly not the same design, even though it’s difficult to see.
More citations:
Ashmolean WA2014.71.44 (1633) Not a sharp photo, but the red/green framing bands on the boxers strip does look like it is probably done in the dual tone baseline, alternating color detour method.
Fitzwilliam T.82-1928 (1691). Looks like there could be a couple of candidate bands, especially in the framing borders around larger strips, but the photo resolution isn’t quite there, and I can’t be sure that the colors are united by a two-tone baseline. I need to do more investigation.
Conclusions:
I have not seen this treatment in portraits, or in fragments of household linen – only on band samplers. I will keep looking, but I think Melinda’s generosity makes it clear that double running done in two colors, with a two-tone baseline and sprigs alternating between those colors was a 17th century innovation, popular in England of that era. She has given us lovely data points from 1629 to the 1690s. Given the paucity of extant samplers before 1600, that is to be expected. Thanks again Melinda!
But I never say never. All I can say is “I haven’t seen it yet.” And who knows, maybe someone out there HAS a citation for use of this technique before 1625, a sighting in works from other times/locations; or evidence on a textile fragment or portrait that it was used on clothing or household linen. If so, please add a comment with that reference here, and I’ll be happy to do a follow-up post.
And my own progress?
I’m up to the outer framing border. I just realized that I forgot to plot the way the wreath-springs work in the corners, so I will do that later or tomorrow, and concentrate on finishing out the upper edge tonight.
Yes, the colors are a bit disjointed, and I’m not entirely pleased with how prominent the diagonals turned out. But I am working under severe materials quantity constraints. Most of the colors were too light to show well in this style of work, and those that are are in single 8 yard six-strand skeins, most of which were already nibbled by the original owner for her prior projects. I am still splitting each strand of the six, to double the yardage, but it’s going to be tight.
CONTINUING EXPERIMENTS
The Grand Experiment of splitting the individual plies of my vintage six-ply Pearsall’s silk floss into component strands continues. So far it has worked out. I’ve only lost one of the separated strands, and that was to it catching on something after I had unwound it, but before I restored some twist by finger spinning, and a very light application of beeswax to set the new spin.
I’m liking the look of the separated strands. Very much a historical look, with the long staple fibers being shown to advantage, and the occasional thick-thin variance of the finger-spun strands. Note that in the photo below in the salmon thread you can see the kink set by the original spinning, but that the kinky texture is not evident at all in the stitched diamond filling. A win.
Too bad the Pearsall’s is such a discontinued unicorn. I don’t think I could do this with Au Ver a Soie’s Soie D’Alger. The staple isn’t as long, and the twist is both different and tighter.
One thing I did to eke out my colors was to work with two at the same time, alternating color stitches on the baselines, and working sprigs and inner ornaments in one color or the other. I hadn’t tried this parlor trick before.
You can see at the bottom of the motto rectangle that I hop-scotched the two colors – working one a bit along, then filling in the other. There are also TWO baselines in this strip due to the use of two colors. One handles the edge along the diamond infilling, plus the alternating squares-and-diagonals inside the border strip, and the other handles the top line and alternating sprigs. That’s because logic prevents doing the top and bottom edge PLUS the sprigs in two colors off of one baseline. In alternating colors you have to keep going forward along a line unless you want it to be solidly one color or the other. I could do the single color wreath sprigs easily, but those three stitches between them (or between the bottom legs of the squared diagonal boxes) would also have to be a single color because they would require doubling back to fill. Therefore, two baselines. Not a problem, and pretty easy to parse for quick stitching, once I realized the problem and stopped stitching myself into cul de sacs.
Except for the dark outlines of the letters, all of the stitching so far has been done with the split strand Pearsall’s. And I intend to continue working that way for the rest of the project, because of the look, my need to stretch my very limited quantities, and the challenge of doing something new and unexpected.
The next design will be one I’ve done quite recently, but worked up a bit differently. I did this Tolkein-sketch-inspired strip on the sampler I did in tribute to the Resident Male’s novel Treyavir. I worked the outlines in navy blue, and then went back and filled in selected areas of the design with squared filling, in a deep gold-tone yellow.
This time I’ve added a corner (very easy to do because of the clear diagonal elements). I’m plotting out a way to do it in multicolor because I don’t really have enough of any one (or two) colors to ensure that I can stitch the entire thing all the way around as a full frame. And I certainly don’t have enough of any one color to do a fill treatment as I did before. Doing multicolor will be problematic because of the design itself, too. The long diagonals “cap” the petal like elements. Possibilities include:
- Skipping over the end cap petal stitches and using a separate color for the top and bottom lines, and to work any stitches between petal caps on the diagonal. All petal elements will be entire, with no truncated end caps.
- Dividing my colors into two groups – possibly cool (blues, greens, purples) and warms (oranges, salmons, tan – no true reds in the pile to speak of). Working triangles in one direction in cools, in succession, alternating with warms, BUT letting the cool color triangle edges dominate, letting the warmer colors recede.
- Working the top and bottom baselines and hard diagonals in the same color throughout (possibly two very close shades of the same color, alternating stitches), then filling in the rest of the triangle patterning in alternating warm and cool colors. All cap stitches will be done in the outline colors.
- Some variant of 1, 2 or 3, with the smaller center triangles being worked in a different tone or possibly even the opposite color group from the larger, outer triangles.
Now to finish off the salmon diamond fill behind the letters, plus the remaining bits of the wreath sprig two-tone edging on that box. Then on to the outer frame.
Also, I will write more on two-tone double running history in the next post (with special acknowledgement to the ever generous Melinda Sherbring who shared copious notes and examples with me) – but I can only sit for so long at a time, and that’s an entire saga all on its own.
AND SO WE BEGIN AGAIN…
Never will I be someone who has a long hiatus between projects. Aside from the fact that I always have several concurrent ones, the final phases of any project are usually fueled by advance planning for the next one.
As I mentioned in the last post, I was prepping the ground for RELENTLESS FORWARD PROGRESS, the piece I am doing as a thank-you for the therapy and nursing staff at Vanderbilt Rehab/Newport Hospital. I’ve finished the truing, decided on a size, hemmed all the way around, and basted my centers and edge borders. I also completed the atypical (for me) task of plotting out 90% of the chart for the entire piece, and started in on the stitching:
I did the extreme layout because I wanted to center the motto properly, inside a surround that used as little fudging as possible. This meant working up corners, and making sure the repeat count was congruent with my usage, and with the available space. Oh, and the lettering. I didn’t find a vintage alphabet with the right flavor, so I decided to make the piece rather abstract, with a quasi-futuristic typeface, instead. I went looking for Just The Right Thing, and didn’t find it among charted alphabets, either. So I drafted up my own. Taking four or five different vaguely science-fiction-movie style typefaces, I rammed them together and drew up my own outline-only interpretation. Before you ask, I don’t have the whole alphabet – only the letters I needed for the motto. But except for an H and I, I have all of the top ten letters from the frequency table, and those two are easy extrapolations.
As the photo above shows, I’ve matched up the center of my chart with the center of my cloth, and started in on the stitching. If you look reaaalllly closely you will see the pink basting threads marking my center lines. And even just starting out I am loving the Pearsall’s. Smooth, sleek, easy to stitch – a dream to work with.
My intent is to do a narrow inner frame around the lettering. Inside that frame I will do very open voiding, possibly just diamonds in a complementary but lighter color. I might experiment with the Pearsall’s 6 ply floss. Each of the separable standard plies is clearly made up of two constituent strands. The silk itself is quite long staple and very strong. I may try to separate a standard ply and work those background diamonds with just one of those strands – what is in effect a half-ply of silk. That would stretch my limited supply, and keep the lettering in front as prominent as possible. Stay tuned for that experiment. I’m not there yet, and have to finish the motto first.
As for my continuing rehab from surgery – I am still improving. Every day a bit stronger and more capable. I can walk further, sit longer, and do far more things on my own than I could in May when I came home. At the end of this month I will start a program of Proton Beam Radiation aimed at eliminating any last possible but otherwise undetectable cancer precursor cells; to knock the chance of recolonization way down. It will run through October and be a daily appointment, Monday through Friday. An inconvenience for sure, but anything that tips the odds even more in my favor is most welcome. In the mean time, my job is to get as strong and as fit as possible prior to radiation commencement. I am taking that job VERY seriously.
JOYOUS ENDING
I’ve finished the latest piece – the sampler in tribute to the Resident Male’s nascent book Forlorn Toys. He is still writing it, so I won’t give spoilers beyond what I have already cited: the motto, the very obvious panel of aforesaid toys, my attempt at spaceships, and the band with the curious feathery rabbit like creatures.
All in all, I am quite pleased with it. Joy now goes to join my Wall of Shame – the place where my completed but as yet unframed/not-ready-for-public-display pieces live side by side with my unfinished projects. As you know this one like so many others is stitched on reclaimed household linen. I did not notice a bleach-weakened bit along a patch of the edging at the lower left. When that was hooped over and tension applied, the neatly done hem stitching failed, leaving a hole. I will eventually mend that, but other priorities assert themselves.
First among those priorities is a piece I promised to the community of therapists and nurses that tended to me at Vanderbilt Rehab Center at Newport Hospital. It’s fueled by a gift of silk floss from Occupational Therapist Abbey. She admired the work I brought with me intending to stitch. She had an inherited stash of silk threads but no use for it, and asked if I would like it. Always happy to have such things, I agreed, and she sent me a wonderous assortment of Pearsall’s silk floss – long discontinued – in jewel tones.
A princely gift, indeed. And only fitting that I use it for a gift back to the caregivers who got me back on my feet and moving again.
I’ve selected a tinted linen to use as ground for this one. I am not sure who gave me this because I didn’t put a note into the package (possibly my spawn, so apologies if it was). It’s custom dyed Zwiegart 36 count linen (big as logs for me), from Hollis Hands Create – a frosty barely blue tint called Silver Moon.
The first step is to begin the design of the motto. In this case “RELENTLESS FORWARD PROGRESS,” furnished by the Vanderbilt Physical Therapy team. Done. And then to begin thinking about how the rest of the piece will be worked. Not a band sampler this time, it will be a “framed” piece, with one or more bands of design running around all four sides of the motto, complete with corners and any improvisations to make the bands’ designs work out correctly with minimal fudging. Therefore I will be doing a some on-screen work to prepare for this one. More than I would have needed had this been a simple band sampler. For example, those corners will have to be drafted out even if I chose band designs I’ve previously devised. And I will have to plan to use multiple colors effectively because while there are many hues in my bag of silks, there are no duplicates, and most of the skeins are partials. It will be fun to figure out how best to use my limited quantity treasures.
And then there’s selecting a size for the piece and preparing my ground. For that the first bit is to true the edges of the linen cut. To do that I find and pull the warp or weft thread at the narrowest point of the cut, withdrawing it entirely from narrow end across to the widest end. This gives me a clean line along which to cut, and ensures that my edges are parallel. On this piece of ground with one selvedge edge, you can see that the left and right sides perpendicular to the selvedge each are slightly skew, one by about an inch, and the other by about 3/4 of an inch.
Note that regardless of the retail source, or whether or not the edges are serged or otherwise finished, if I buy a cross bolt full width cut or a fat quarter I always inspect the edges and true them in this manner. I have yet to receive any cut that was done completely congruent with weave direction. Sometimes the deviation is minimal, and there is only an inch or so lost all the way around. Sometimes, especially with lower price precuts sold in big box crafts stores, up to four inches can be wasted all the way around
This is why if you purchase pre-cut yardage, even if you have added on extra width to allow for easy hoop use and framing, it doesn’t hurt to add an additional inch or two all the way around. You never know when you will get a cut so skew that after the cloth is trued parallel to the weave, the cloth ends up being much smaller than you thought you were buying. Charles Craft prepackaged cotton and cotton blend evenweave was notorious for skew cuts. Their products started me doing this “proofing” step, and I have not regretted it since.
I won’t be using this entire fat quarter on this project. I will measure my ground cloth piece after it’s cut and the left and right edges are hemmed. I’ll decide then on the orientation of my sampler, cut my ground accordingly (also on a pulled thread line), and hem that last edge. The remaining bit will be returned to stash. And I will get a start on selecting my framing pattern(s) and drafting up my new corners.
On the non-computer work side, while the design work is going on but after I get my piece of cloth sized and hemmed, I will baste in guidelines: centers and stitching area edges. The final count of the available stitching real estate between the area edge marks will help inform final design tweaks.
I don’t think of all this pre-work as being very complex or onerous. The physical prep is mostly mindless and gives me plenty of headspace for the rest of the planning.
Now off to select my patterns… I toyed with using icons representing progress from sitting to walking, but I decided that was too limiting. The rehab therapies offered go far beyond simple sit to stand to walk, and I wanted the piece to be as inclusive (or non-specific) as possible. And the logos for the various institutions and professional certifications involved are too fussy to be easily charted at my scale. So it’s a mix of florals, geometrics, and possibly a pet or mythical beast or two thrown in. After all, who doesn’t identify with dragons or kittens?
PLAYING WITH TOYS
As I mentioned before, there’s no point in honoring a book called Forlorn Toys without showing some of the toys. So I drafted up a representative sample.
I’m still filling in the background stars, but that should not take long. Then another plain band of long armed cross stitch, and selecting the first of what will probably be the last two strips on this piece. The final touch will be to revisit the motto section, adding themed elements left and right of the lettering, and perhaps jazzing up JOY a bit so that it doesn’t look so pitiful against the darker typeface used for the rest of the lettering.
As to the remaining strips – I’m actually running out of material. I either have to spend more time drawing, or stitch slower. But in the interim I have decided that designs used on pieces I have given away, never to be seen again are now fair game for repetition. So if you see something that piques a sense of deja vu, you are exactly correct. Done before, but not precisely in this way. An old friend returning for a repeat visit.
After this one on to the next. No clue yet as to what that might be. I have a couple of outstanding promises in queue. Possibly one of those. And those teddy bears… I may doodle up a couple of strip variations featuring just them, for folk who want to do up birth commemoration samplers, or bibs and toddler clothing trims for particularly favored children. Provided there is interest, of course.
String-Or-Nothing 