Russian Goldwork Embroidery Design from 12th c. Suzdal collar

I’ve been working on ideas for my elevation gown, and of course it must have Russian goldwork on it. The underdress will have embroidered collar and cuffs, and I’m using a pattern found on a 12th century collar from Suzdal.

It’s a design I’ve sketched out a couple of times, both a simplified version and one closer to the extant piece. Like many early Russian patterns, it incorrporates 2 of my favorite motifs: the tree of life and the simple scrollwork.

In case anyone else is feeling inspired to do some Russian goldwork, I wanted to share my sketch. It’s a little cleaned up using the computer, but it should work well.

Happy Sewing!

Rus Embroidery #4

I’ve been having fun sketching Viking Rus embroidery designs from period sources.  Their artwork, as I may have said before, is this amazing mix of Viking, Byzantine and Eastern.  I’m still researching on the stitches they used, but I haven’t yet found enough to post anything.

Here’s a new design. It’s based on a sword hilt from 11th century Ukraine.

Neckline / collar

 

Hem, Sleeves and other Straights

Documentation

Rus Embroidery #3

Between 2 days of homeschool co-op and one of my best friends getting married, it’s been a busy couple of days.  I’m just posting a new Rus Viking embroidery design based off of an 11th/12th century piece of Rus embroidery.   Documentation to the piece will come later.  Enjoy!

Viking Design for use in Embroidery

I’m still working on research on Rus sewing techniques and embroidery methods, especially those not gilt or bead.  From what I’ve learned, it is different from the contemporary techniques we’ve found in western Scandinavian lands. Not sure if I would call it more complex, but it certainly has a level of complexity I did not expect to find in 10th and 11th century textiles.

Until I can gather my notes into more writing, I’m still working on my Viking and Rus designs for use in embroidery.  You know how I love the combination of curves and geometric figures.  This one is inspired by a pattern Sue Margeson’s book on “The Vikings in Norfolk.”

Pleated Embroidered (Smocked) Apron: Mock-Up #1

First, I finally got the fabric I’m going to use for the side-laced cotte dyed!!

Freshly Dyed Fabric

I love the color! I was thinking it would be a bit more blue-ish, but I am pleasantly surprised by the results. I put it next to my white muslin for comparison.

I ended up using Dharma’s fiber reactive procion colors:

One part #30A Emerald Green

One part #32A Electric Blue

And 3/4 part #46 Brilliant Blue

On to the Pleated Apron

My first mock-up of the embroidered pleated apron is done!  It’s a style of aprons that popped up around the mid 14th century and lasted until the late 16th century without changing much in style. I found a couple of new pictures demonstrating the over 200 year range of this accoutrement.

Luttrell Psalter
1320 – 1340 England

Detail from The Seamstress
Edward Schoen 1535

What I like, other than the bling quality, is that it makes the simple apron not so simple and allows it to be worn with fancier garb.

Last time I left off, I was having problems simply getting the dots straight. Here’s what I worked out.

That green thing in the upper right is a home-made Bat-a-rang I made for my son’s birthday party 3 years ago. I still find those things everywhere!

I made a perfect rectangle of a piece of cotton muslin by pulling threads. Here’s a quick and dirty tutorial on it: http://www.sewing.org/files/guidelines/4_204_straightening_fabric_grain.pdf

I squared the edges on my large fabric cutting board and used the marks to make a line nearly across the entire apron every half inch.  Half an inch was too big on one of my previous attempts, but with the method I’m trying, it’s perfect.

Keeping the fabric still lined up on the mat, I marked every 1/2″ in the perpendicular direction. The fabric did slip quite a bit, so generally between each row I would re-straighten it on the mat. It doesn’t matter how many rows you make, but it needs to be an even number (we’ll get to that later).

At this point, I have eight long lines going across, and about 70 dashes going up and down.

Somewhere I read a tip that said do all of the gathering stitches at once. So I threaded 8 needles – I used sharp, medium length embroidery needles. I used normal DMC embroidery floss in a light, but not white color. Avoid the urge to use a completely contrasting color, like red. I did that with the cartridge pleats on my partlet, and when I pulled them out, it left red residue in the holes.

The method I used was I ran along the length-way lines. A smidgen before every dash, I pushed the needle through the fabric. Using the same motions used in a running stitch, right after each dash I came back up.

Tie the back ends of the thread together in batches of 2 and 3. It makes it easier to adjust when gathering the fabric.

When you get to the end of your threads, but still have more line to finish . . .

Start pulling the gathers. That’s why you tied the threads off at the other end and why it’s easier to work all 8 rows at once.

When I finished gathering the gathers, I thought that it looked way too small. I knew that I wanted the apron wider than this.

So I set about spreading the folds and trying my hardest to keep the columns straight. Then I laughed and realized that the smocking will loosen the gathers. I re-pulled the threads together, although not as tight as I did at first.

Take a chop-stick, or something like it, and pock into each pocket created by the gathered threads. It is tedious, but when you are done . . .

all of the rows line up nicely, and . . .

the front looks just lovely.

Now for the smocking. It helps if you understand the pattern first before the stitches.

The Pattern

• You are working with 2 rows at a time. That’s why you made an even number of rows.
• 
• I labeled the columns to make it easier to understand.
• Remember: rows go side to side. Columns go up and down, like columns on a building. It’ll get confusing if I don’t make this distinction.
• Start at the lower LEFT of the whole damn thing. Believe me, it makes a difference. (Yeah, I tried starting on the right – a big mess)
• At the bottom left corner, Column A and Column B get stitched together. (Stitch explanations come in a minute).
• Then go up one row, and Column B and Column C get stitched together.
• Go back down one row and Column C and Column D get stitches together.
• Go up one row and Column D and Column E get stitched together.
• Go back down one row and Column E and Column F get stitched together
• And so on, and so on, until you finish those 2 rows.
• Here’s a little visual I threw together:
• 

The Stitches

• 
• Bring your thread up from the bottom on the leftish to middle part of the top of A. In this case, A is not at the end.
• 
• Bring your needle around the other side of B and push it through both A and B.
• 
• Do that one more time. Bring the needle around to the other side of B and go through B and A.
• 
• Now bring the needle around again, but this time slip the needle into B only. You are going to run the needle up B to the row on top of it. BUT you are doing this under the cloth.
• 
• Now you are going to do to B and C what you just did to A and B.
• And then come back down C to the first row.
• 
• Now repeat with C and D. And then with D and E. And so on.

When you get to the end of the row:

• Connect the last two together and then tie your thread off underneath.
• 
• Ignore the thread in the middle, it’s just a loose thread that got into the frame.

Starting a New Row

• Whatever you do, do NOT, I mean do NOT, just move on up to Row 3 and think you’re going to just work your way back to the left.
• It does NOT work that way. Yeah, I learned that the hard way too.
• Go back to the beginning of Row 3 all the way on the left.
• 
• The pattern for Rows 3 & 4 is the same as for Rows 1 & 2
• Repeat again for Rows 5 & 6, and then 7 & 8.
• Keep doing it until you finish

Progression

• 
• 
• 
• 

All Done, At Least with the Smocking

• 
• After the first two or three, I grew tired of having to tie off the loose threads in the back. The pleats are still fairly tight, and that made it a little more difficult.
• Once I was done with the smocking, I took out the gathering stitches.
• 
• Loosened the pleats.
• 
• Then I tied down all of the loose threads.

• 

  Front view

• 

  Back side

All that was left was to hem it and add the apron ties and waistband.

Do I like it?  Yes, I think it is beautiful.

Can I improve on my techniques? Absolutely! Even looking back through the pictures I saw a couple of things I can do better on next time. All-in-all, smocking can be fun!

Beginning to Smock

I take back all the bad things I said about cartridge pleating and blackwork counted stitch embroidery. Smocking! That’s the real pain in the tush!

It’s for the decorative apron I’m making for my Christmas Revel A&S entry. It’s a project for which I have the documentation. It’s not so big that it’ll take months and months to complete, but it has a degree of complexity.

Yesterday, I looked over the documentation. The pleating part looks like cartridge pleats but on a larger scale. I figured that since I know how to do cartridge pleats, this should be no problem. Wrong! My problem is that it is so much larger and getting the pleating marks even is not easy.

At first I berated myself and told myself that I must be daft if I can not figure out how to do this. That was after I spent 5 hours doing this:

Ignore the squiggly on the side; it’s part of an abandoned project. As you can see, the dots are no where near even. At first I was trying to use the edge to make the dots line up. I gave up on that and drew a base-line to use. Still, even with my fancy ruler they would not line up. Plus I was making the dots 1/2″ apart, and after thinking about it (and 5 hours of cursing) I wanted them closer together.

It really didn’t help that I was doing this on my lap, using a large cookbook as a table. I was kind of in the middle of a Psych marathon with my 14 year old and didn’t want to get up.

So, I gave up on this end. I turned the linen piece around and made a straight edge by pulling threads out and cutting along the missing thread line:

The dots may be hard to see from the faintness, but they are much straighter. I used my favorite ruler that let me see through to match up the now straight fabric edge to the measuring lines. It’s not perfect, but it’s not bad. It still took over 4 hours to do (and I’m not quite done yet).

All of this work left me a little anxious to get into the actual smocking, but I realized that I was still unclear about some of the details.

Sometimes before you can learn something new, you need to figure out what not only what things are called, but what questions you need to ask. So I needed to hit the books again and do a bit more research.

My first question was how do you get the pleats (and/or) dots even without going insane.  Turns out that it’s not that easy. My having problems with it wasn’t unusual. In fact they make specific tools just  for getting the dots even when smocking, such as iron-on smocking dots and dot templates. They also make machines that do nothing but make the pleats for smocking. Wow! So I’m not such a nutter-head for having a difficult time doing this.

I got some tips and thought of a couple of creative ways on my own to make the dots even and less time consuming. More on that later.

Then I started asking other questions:

When making the pleats, does it matter if I work from left to right and from top to bottom?

With the dots, do I go up one hole and down the next? Or do I go down slightly to one side of the hole and up slightly to the other side (or vice/versa)?

What about needle angle? Should it always be perpendicular to the fabric? Or can I use a running stitch?

And the type of needle. After it’s pleated what kind of needle do I use to smock? Long or short? Sharp or ball-point?

I found out some of the answers, and the rest I figure I will learn by trail and error.

So I put my nice linen down, cut a piece of cotton muslin and decided that it’s mock-up time. What will I use my mock-ups for? Casual wear. My girls could wear them. Or I just may give one out as a door prize when I teach a class on this stuff.

One things I did discover is that there are very little tutorials on-line on smocking from the beginning to the end of a project.  So I plan on making one. A smocking for dummies tutorial. That will come much later after I’ve learned it myself.

It may seem like I flit about from one project to another, not finishing any – or at least that’s what my husband thinks. But I’m not.

Side-laced cotte update:

• Washed the fabric yesterday
• Have one or two more dying test batches to try out before deciding on a color
• Should be dying the fabric tomorrow

Blackwork Coif:

• Still working on my needle-case in order to learn counted stitch blackwork embroidery.
• Have the flowers and patterns picked out for the coif
• The scroll-work design has been transferred to the linen I’ll be using.
• I still have to decide on  exact placement and sketch it out, but I’ll do that after my needle-case is done.

Off to sew!

Christmas Revel Prep

I’ve felt run down for the last few days, but I was hoping it was just a low iron week. I added my vitamins back to my daily regimen in hopes that would I feel better, but I’m still tired. This morning I woke up coughing. At least with the vitamin increase, I should be able to fight off this bad boy a bit faster than normal. I’ll just cure it with some hot toddies. Ooo, and I have a grog mix I’ve been wanting to try.  I do have to run out to get the Thanksgiving turkey today, but after than it’s bed for me.

The realization that I will not get done with my blackwork Elizabethan coif in time to enter it into Christmas Revel’s A&S has hit me. Counted stitch blackwork is very, very slow. I’m not even half done with my needle-case cover, and all I’ve done on the coif is planned and sketched it.

So, I spent part of last night looking through the documentation I’ve gathered for projects that I haven’t yet made, and I decided on the pleat-work embroidered apron.  Since my next non-A&S compliant project is the side-laced cotte (I’m just going to  machine-sew it), I want something to bling it up. Not much jewelry was worn in the age of cotehardies. By the time they introduced waist-lines, even the girdle was not tremendously popular. However, in a few manuscripts and woodcut prints you see a very fancy apron.

It’s white, although I have seen a couple of other colors, and it’s most probably linen.  Along the top, normally gathered edge, you see pleat-work, sometimes plain and sometimes with embroidery on top of it. It looks very much like smocking in some of the pictures. I’ve never done smocking (I’m a virgin smocker), but it looks suspiciously like cartridge pleats – rows of evenly spaced gathering stitches.

This apron is seen from the early  14th to the mid 16th centuries. So I can wear it with my cotes or my late period Flemish garb, which makes it a pretty versatile accessory. Here are a few examples.

14th Century Pleatwork Apron

Early 14th Century
Brown pleat-work apron with white edging

Early 15th Century

 

Mid 16th Century

Now to figure out the how, and hopefully later tonight I’ll start the pleating.

 

Needlecase and Side-laced Cote Update

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about my blackwork needle-case. I took a small break while I was doing the research on the cotte project. After picking it back up a few days ago, I’m almost half done with the cover. Doesn’t sound like much, but let me give you some perspective.

Each repeat is about 1 cm squared. Yep, one cm. Each one takes me 30 to 45 minutes to complete. If I over or under stitch by even one thread, I have to rip out back to the point where I digressed. I admit that I am pretty slow, but my work has less and less mistakes as I go along, which means less and less ripping out. I’m hoping that as I practice, I’ll be able to go faster – or at least I’m still holding out hope.

At this moment I’ve made it this far:

The red solid lines are the outline, and the dashed one is the middle. It’s coming along, and it helps make watching “Supernatural” less scary.

On to the side-laced cotehardie.

I’m picking out the color for my fabric, and I’m leaning towards a bluish-green.  I test dyed two different colors of linen. Both of these linens I have  used to make several items, and I’m pretty tired of the colors. It was on sale for a really good price, so I bought way too much.

I’ve been into tie-dying for the last couple of years. It started out as a fun thing to do at a non-traditional baby shower, and it stuck. I’ve moved on from using Rit dye. Please, please, please, please never use Rit dye to dye nice linen.  Don’t even use it to dye not so nice linen. Dharma Trading Company sells the best fiber reactive dyes that don’t fade and don’t bleed. This is what I use http://www.dharmatrading.com/html/eng/3796-AA.shtml?lnav=dyes.html. I have a bunch of odds and ends left from tie-dying, and I’m trying to find a good mix to make a nice color.  Of course I do promise my good friend E that I’ll replace anything I use up.

Today’s mix was brilliant blue and emerald green, about half and half.  I mixed a very small amount and let it soak for a couple of hours.

Recycled containers are great for this kind of work.

The fabrics under each swatch are the base colors. The swatches are what the fabric looked like after dying. With this mix, I like the green one better. A bit darker would be nice, but the tone is good. Tomorrow I’ll try a bit more blue.

More 16th Century Blackwork Fill-in Pattern Analysis

Oh my, I haven’t posted in a few days. It’s nearly Halloween – my favorite time of year. I’ve been, among other things, having fun with the kids. We were invited to one of their teen friend’s Halloween themed birthday party, and so I decided it would be the perfect occasion to go as something really scary. Unfortunately, I didn’t count on a side-trip to Walmart  for the friend I was riding with to pick something up. Let’s just sum it up and say that children screamed, I felt bad, and you may see me on the People of Walmart page.

Now on to the other fun stuff.

I’ve been continuing work on my needle case. It’s slow going, but my repeats are more consistent and I am picking up a bit of speed.

Blackwork Needle-case as of 10-21

The ruler should give some perspective on the size. Each repeat is about 1 cm by 1 cm. That’s a-lot of tiny stitches. It’s based off a pattern I analyzed here: https://maniacalmedievalist.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/analyzing-and-recreating-blackwork-fill-in-patterns/

I’ve also been analyzing other blackwork fill-in patterns from 16th century pieces. I have two more from the same piece as pattern #1 (see needle-case above). It’s an English 16th century pillow-cover  from the Falkland Collection at  Victoria & Albert Museum http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O317803/pillow-cover.

16th century pillow-cover from the Falkland Collection at Victoria & Albert Museum.

This little piece here:

16th Century Blackwork Fill-i9n Pattern 2

can be done in either direction.  It’s a really easy pattern, but the simplicity doesn’t mean that it isn’t very nice when used. It reminds me of seeds on a strawberry. The pattern itself is simple to recreate – alternating dashes.

Blackwork Fill-in Pattern #2

My third fill-in pattern is the last one from the same pillow-cover. It’s more complex than the one above, but it’s still fairly simple – diamonds and stars.

16th Century Blackwork Fill-in Pattern #3

My analysis may have an error, but I like it my way. If you look near the upper right corner, you can see that the diamond has a vertical line going through it connecting the center to the stars above and below, but I like it better with the space open.

16th Century Blackwork Fill-in Pattern #3

I’m hoping to finish up my the embroidery on my needlecase this week. I clamor about the time it is taking, but I need to realize that it’s not the project I’m working on but learning the art. Learning a new art does take time.

Needle Case – 6th Time’s a Charm

Started working on my needle case. To give myself more practice with working this blackwork fill-in pattern,  my needle case cover will be made up entirely of the pattern. To add an extra degree of difficulty (as if that was necessary), I’m using linen that isn’t an even count weave. The first six repeats of the pattern are all flawed. Some more than others. Mostly because I miscounted a thread or didn’t see a thread. But the 6th one, that is perfect – or at least as perfect as an uneven weave will allow.

My perfect repeat is on the bottom right. It’s so pretty!!!

Being so happy about finally stitching the perfect repeat, I tried another repeat from this same fill-in patter. It came out flawless too. I am possibly catching on!!

My perfect little dude and its mate. (Yes, I’m personifying my embroidery. It gets me through a-lot of stitches.)

There was a point in time when I thought, “Blackwork looks easy enough. It’s just black thread on white fabric” and “Counted stitch embroidery is a joke! I mean, how difficult is it to count threads.”  As it turns out, it’s pretty damn difficult. I have a whole new appreciation for you cross-stitchers! And I have certainly said a few choice words to the past me that had such thoughts.