A Different Kind of Embroidery: Treadle Sewing Machine Tambour Work

This afternoon, leaving me confined to the house by the aftermath of yet another illness, my husband and boys headed to West Liberty. Yes, that West Liberty, the little town whose downtown was largely wiped away by a tornado earlier this spring. Each year the extended clan visits family gravesites to clean and decorate them, and then sits down to a vast and delicious dinner, from hamburgers to soup beans (stewed pinto beans) to slaws and red velvet cake.

Test number one: linen thread. Boo. See below.

I wandered around by myself, unaccustomed to the silence and the enforced ease. This morning I'd tried some spring cleaning, little tasks that could be performed at a snail's pace and mostly sitting down, but was enjoined to rest this afternoon. Normally I'd nap: what a luxury that is, to wrap an arm around your warm, fluffy, purring Muffin kitty and drift away, but today dreams didn't come. Instead, an old idea kept jabbing at me. I've often wondered if I could imitate tambour embroidery on a 1910s Wilcox and Gibbes chainstitch treadle machine I've had for almost a decade now.  You can believe I've fabricated myself some pretty magnificent embroidered garments in those daydreams.

(Awww, Muffin is back. This time she's gone under the skirted table where I am typing and has settled on my feet. I can sense her purring through the fabric.)

Well, the machine was only a few feet away, I had a span of hours when housework and other musts were must nots. How rare is that, eh?

So I tried it. Starched a square of lightweight muslin, drew a few motifs common to the Regency period on it, eased an embroidery hoop under the needle bar, and threaded the machine for embroidery. On the Wilcox and Gibbes, you draw on the back side of the fabric, place that face up, and sew that way, because the chain shows underneath, while the top looks like a straight stitch.

To embroider, you move, twist and turn the embroidery hoop by hand to "draw" the shapes. It's all freehand -- on a treadle there's no computer guide. So a sure, slow hand is essential or you get dreck and the thread breaks, too.

Try number two: silk thread. Better but not good enough. For reference,
the motif is four inches long by two inches wide.

First I tested linen thread used for sewing stays. Ugh. The machine hated it because the thread has slubs, so it kept catching in the tension and in the needle's eye. Plus, I was using a big size 1 Schmetz needle, the only one whose eye the linen would (mostly) negotiate. Plus I had to set the stitch length short or the fabric would pucker.

Then I changed the needle to size 3 Schmetz, closest to the size 4 the manual desires, set the stitch length to the suggested setting, and used tightly twisted silk, Au Ver de Soie; the manual says Thou Must Use Silk, you know. I know why now: it's strong, very smooth, and can take the pulling and shaping. Ooooh, it stitched really nicely, so long as I kept to large curves or straight lines.

Results? Meh...

 Meh is right. Meh on several accounts.

1. The stitch lacks the subtle puffy quality that hand tambour has; the machine stretches the thread to an even tension each time and it's a little less round, a little more elongated than handmade work.
2. The needle creates visible holes in the fabric and the silk thread can't quite cover them up. Sure, a tambour needle is big too, but you can use fatter thread. Here we're pretty limited to needles size three and four.
3. The stitches are all the same length, and so small motifs with tight round curves don't work all that well, even when I hand-turn the wheel and lift the presser foot to shift the fabric. That's what you do on this kind of machine to radically alter direction -- you swivel on the thread, not on the needle. Wide curves and spikey shapes are better. So vines and carnations and to some degree, acanthus, shape decently; those tight rounded curves found in roses and spriggy leaves leave too many poorly tensioned stitches.

As you can see in the detail shot below, the thread tension goes wonky on curves. By the way, that is supposed to be a four-petaled flower, each of those petals is supposed to have three lobes. However, the lobes proved so difficult to do on the scale of 1/2" or less each that I decided to see how larger curves would appear.

Naturally, I could change up the design, introduce multiple rows of stitching to outline spikier forms, where smooth tension reigns, but the fact remains that the results are so obviously machine-made that the juice is not worth the squeeze for Georgian/Regency-era work. The embroidery still won't look real enough. At least real enough to me. Back to the tambour hook...

Those of you who want to do nineteenth or early twentieth century work? Give it a try! Any style that favors large, bold designs may give you just dandy results, and the machine-y look will be just like what they produced, since this sort of machine embroidery was coming into its own.

So that's that. The dream of oh, three-plus years went poof. Oh well, it was a thought.

More Embroidery Progress: A Carnation Acts Difficult

Dusk is drawing on and the sun is past the horizon, leaving rays of orange-cream pop light floating through the trees out back. The flowers in the garden obtain that luminescence they only get in the evening; they and the grass are glowing and I can hear an early cicada trying his wings. He is weeks and weeks out of his due date, I think, and he sings alone so far.

I've just finished my own, embroidered flower, and it too is luminescent, this time in a soft blue and pink that a carnation never wore, so maybe I'll call him a bachelor's button. He's another motif on the sleeveless spencer, and he struggled for hours to come to life.

Here's the motif in natural light.

His first two incarnations lasted only minutes before I cut them to pieces, poor things. I had the devil of a time with making the petals feel like they were really lifting themselves out of the stem. After all, you cannot curve sewn threads, only couched ones. The first time the petals came out looking like a child's drawing; angles everywhere and nothing alive. Trying him in long-and-short stitch was just as bad, for soie ovale shows spaces in between stitches like nobody's business, and I haven't had practice in that stitch for at least a decade.

The Met spencer's carnations didn't offer advice: the blown-up photos have lost any stitch details. Consulting my embroidery books and 18th Century Embroidery Techniques, and Seventeenth and Eighteenth Fashion in Detail helped very little either, for they illustrate no carnations close up; all I got was the sense that threads might overlay and fan to produce a growth pattern. My Pinterest files brought nothing; all my carnation images are in tambour stitch. Grr.

So it was pencil to paper to experiment, and finally I came up with stitch directions that seemed sensible. The third round I allowed to fan the threads a bit, allowed some threads to overlay one another at the base, and I followed the petal growth directions, but gently. I let the needle and thread paint, sometimes laying the thread atop the fabric where I wanted it to go to assess direction, before I poked the needle to the back.

The blue thread took on life and slowly a blossom grew, and with the addition of a few light pink threads to indicate the lower petal portions, and a few to suggest the flower base, I had something that breathed. The picture is weak; he actually swoops to the side, instead of stands heads up. So tilt your monitor and you'll get a better idea :}

The stem and leaves were another challenge altogether. The leaves are sharply pointed, something that's not easy to do in silk chenille. The first petal is wonky, but the second leaf came out okay, after I'd learned to shape and fold the chenille to follow outlines and to use couching stitches to create sharp corners. I'd tear out the first leaf except that the couching thread continues to the second leaf and I haven't the heart to redo it just now.

You can see the results of the last effort above. Once again, the laying tool was integral to shaping most stitches, and essential for finally smoothing everything. For a first carnation, I am pleased. Long may he bloom.

The B-29

I heard the sound in the distance while at work here at home Friday, what they call a drone, large somethings beating the air and slicing it into falling pieces. I knew it had to be a propeller plane and a big one. The drone grew louder and in spite of knowing that I had nothing to fear, those cut-up slices of sound falling from the sky were menacing.

She flew overhead, right over our house, quite low, and the sound resolved itself to one I've heard in the movies. There were four big engines driving the propellers, and snub nose, a silver glow, wide, rounded wings. She was actually quite beautiful, and she sounded close up like an army of giant beetles. From this angle I couldn't see the narrow rods jutting out that would be her machine guns.

I knew her name was Fifi, having read about her visit in the newspaper. She's the last Superfortress still flying; her sisters are all gone, the two most famous, or infamous, living in museums now, memorials to the nasty birth of the atom bomb.

Over the next two days she would fly overhead perhaps eight or nine times, and each time all of us who could would careen outdoors to listen and watch her. She is a living memory of an era so terrible and such a part of our collective human history that she must be listened to.

My husband and I took the boys to the aviation museum last evening in the hopes of seeing her up close, but the museum had already closed. So we hooked our fingers into the chain link fence and looked at her. On the ground she was menacing once again, although that didn't impair her beauty. It was the gunners' positions, the machine guns the only sharp edges on her, that gave her nature away, and the doors in her stomach that had let fall how many thousands of bombs.

This morning, they and my mother visited again, and this time they toured the museum and saw her up close. I was confined home with yet another cold.

I won't say more. What do you say to something beautiful that's also destructive, whose every silhouette is a mixture of sublime design and embodied proof of man's propensity to mix the hideous and the incalculably stupid with the heroic and the selfless?

Embroidery Progress: Two Motifs Finished, and A Children's Milestone

Quick progress report: 2 motifs finished! Here's one:

Here's Muffin, enjoying the sunshine with me:

The working milieu was especially nice this morning. The boys were at nursery school, their last class day, so I brought out good coffee into the sunshine and copious sounds of birds: crows calling and their babies nickering, robins telling territory tales and fighting over the serviceberries, finches, and other birds I couldn't name. Such a peaceful time, and warm light to work in, a pleasant neighbor to talk to, and an unexpected and very welcome visit from my friend Caroline.

The last day of nursery school. There's a milestone I am loth to see pass. They have loved those Tuesdays and Thursdays. They have made friends, they have sung "And the Green Grass Grew All Around", they have rocketed under the maple trees on the playground playing "pirate police", they have loved their teachers and the process of learning. A gentle, slow, pleasurable introduction to school. For Curte and I, the joys of children's wobbly letters, construction-paper pictures, songs sung with hand motions, graces memorized to say at dinner. I will miss this safe, very happy, softly paced and nurturing place.

At nursery school fun night

Sleeveless / Convertible Spencer: Embroidery Experiment 2 a Success!

The working milieu

After the annoying and coarse results of the first embroidery experiment, I decided to order flat silk thread that would divide more easily. When the Eterna silk thread I chose finally arrived, however, most of the threads I had ordered turned out to be out of stock, and the few colors that I did order lacked the fine shine of the Au Ver a Soie thread, although the threads certainly divided easily and so could be used for fine motifs. Depression. What to do?

I thought of ordering the gorgeous Japanese flat silk that Hallie Larkin of At the Sign of the Golden Scissors discussed in her recent embroidery post, but it goes for $7 a spool, and even though you get 60 meters per spool, I don't need 60 meters of any one color and would have dropped over $50 on more thread.

Depression deepened. I set the project aside to sulk.

It kept calling out to me from the closet. I listened, disgruntled, but gave in.

A sunny afternoon found me on the pine floor in the kitchen, with a 20" thread of the Au ver Soie on my knee, and a long, narrow beading needle in my fingers. I attempted to use the needle to divide the silk filaments into narrow strands. Both Hallie Larkin and Mary Corbet said it could be done, with care. Indeed, the almost liquid silk DID divide, half-way through. Then it fuzzed up and tangled. I picked it up in my fingers in desperation, and slid it through them back and forth, between my fingernails, attempting to work out the tangles.

A miracle. The tangles smoothed, the gloss returned to the silk, and it flattened out, easing into a tiny rivelet of vibrant color.

I had a thought. My applique needle had a round eye but my beading needle a long narrow eye. What effect could I attain if the silk were truly applied so that its filaments were all laid out really flat, flatter than they could become when trapped in a round-eyed needle?

The silk easily threaded the beading needle, and did lie in my fingers quite flat. I took an experimental stitch, and in a second burst of inspiration, changed out my laying tool, a long pin, for the flat side of a seam ripper, and when I finished the stitch, I ran the seam ripper along the threads underneath, guiding them into flatness. The result was lovely and smooth, with the many filaments laying side by side reflecting light and looking like many stitches, not just one. Could this be repeated? I brought the project upstairs, into more even light.

The beading needle's length was a help, because I could find the placement for the next stitch without a shadow or fingers getting in the way of my eyes. The second stitch worked too. The third not so much, but I kept trying.

I worked a basic flower shape in laid stitch in a deep coral pink, and then threaded a narrow section of Eterna silk, and overlaid the centers of the petals in a light pink. The laying tool flattened and guided each stitch into place.

Then, after all the stitches were placed, I ran the flat side of the seam ripper laying tool under the stitches composing each petal and worked with them, repositioning the threads, and making the light pink thread nest down into the coral color. I "petted" and stroked each stitch to flatten and straighten it. I'd read or heard (was it Robert Haven who told me when several of us toured the UK Costume Department in January) that you could do this, and for Pete's sake, it worked.

Here is what I ended up with. In the image the Eterna silk (the inexpensive Chinese dividable silk) is threaded in the beading needle; the seam ripper and the coral Au Ve a Soie lie nearby. I am very pleased with this second effort. If you consider that each petal is the size of a woman's pinky nail -- about 1/4" -- when looked at with ordinary eyesight and not the camera's magnifying lens, it's pretty darn satisfying.

So that's what I will keep doing! I'll pet and poke and massage and primp the stitches until I have them the way I want them, and the handsome little flowers will soon start blossoming all over their lilac ground.

Let's look at the original Met spencer again. Here's a similar flower. The flower center is a single spangle. If you look at the little divots at the end of each stitch, and especially at the light pink sections of the petals, you notice that there aren't that many stitches composing each petal...there are lots of filaments of flat silk, but not that many threads. When I had last looked at the flowers, I had focused on the filaments. They are numerous and make you think there are lots of actual threads, but it's not so. The low number of stitches is even more evident in the leaves.


A similar flower design, from the original Met spencer.

 A final note: really good light is essential for this kind of embroidery. You want indirect bright light, and as few shadows as possible. This table sits at a double window, direction north-northwest, and it's barely good enough. A sixty watt bulb at night is not enough at all, and a bank of overhead lights only causes shadows, at least in my house. I've had to experiment a lot.

Good light is essential.

 So, onward ho, the greenery on this flower, and 15 more flowers to go!

1790s Lilac Silk Petticoat: All About Hems

Hemming the lilac petticoat.

Good morning, everyone! Here I front-porch sit, playing hooky -- again -- from church, and feeling very guilty about it. Still, it's been a bit of a week due to illness and workmen in the house. The peace of a slightly damp but sunny morning out among the clover, the migrating songbirds, and the breakfast-hunting squirrels, the memory of a radio sermon in my mind, and the sewing box beside me are restoring health and energy.

The lilac project goeth strong. While I await the Eterna silk thread to arrive so I can complete the embroidery on the lilac sleeveless spencer, I've been making up the lilac petticoat. You first met it last fall in Making the Wrap-Front Dress Do Double and Triple Duty, and again in Lilac, Lilacs, and a New Look.

As with many of my projects, it is going through several iterations over time. This summer it is just a plain petticoat, accented only with silk stitching at the hem. Sometimes mantua makers and seamstresses sewed seams in contrasting colors to add fun and visual definition to function. I've tried without luck this morning to locate the Regency-era dress in the Victoria and Albert that features yellow silk stitching on a deep-colored ground: it's in Nineteenth Century Costume in Detail, an all-time favorite book. During subsequent years it will receive sprigged or swagged embroidery; right now the pattern is maturing in my mind.

Hemming the Petticoat

During the 1790s petticoats were still common, still worn with jackets or spencers or robes/open gowns. Many of the fashion plates that show what appear to be dresses are in fact made up of separate articles. Have a read of Gallery of Fashion or The Fashions of London and Paris at the Bunka Gakuen Library and this becomes abundantly clear.

This petticoat is no different. I am making it up just like countless 18th century petticoats, early or late. While I use more panels than they did, because most of our silk comes in wider widths (in this case with two panels of silk shantung), the rest is normal MO: the panels seamed selvage to selvage with combination stitch, with a narrow hem at the bottom (ordinary for the period and conserving of fabric), and a waist stroke-gathered to cotton tapes that then tie around the waist and two pocket holes at either side built into the seams.

The hemming is again ordinary for the period. No blind hem this, just a running stitch. Here is where the contrasting silk offers a little punch. Purple and yellow! Drops of sunshine on the lilacs.

Here's how to make the stitches even.

First, if you are sewing on tightly woven silk, use as narrow a needle as you can, and make sure it's fresh: run it through an emery (that little hard strawberry that comes with the ubiquitous strawberry pincushion) to remove any burrs or heaven forbid, rust. I am using a Clover applique needle, size ten. (In the wish list are good English needles that stay sharp longer.)

The sewing silk thread should be high quality. I am using Au Ver a Soie and the thread is waxed with beeswax (mmmm, good!) to prevent tangling and to help it slide through the silk.

Example of the running stitch hem.

Sew the fabric under tension, just as recommended in period texts (such as those gathered into The Ladies Stratagem. You could use a sewing brick, or pin the work to your knee, but I choose to pin it to my sewing box. Then stretch out the fabric taut, and turn the raw edge under perhaps 1/4 of an inch for a few inches, turn it under again, and press the hem flat with my fingers until it holds, and pin it for good measure.

Then running stitch the hem those few inches, rocking the needle to gather up two or three stitches at once, and make sure that the stitches and the spacing between them are as even as possible, perhaps 12 stitches per inch. Running hems on downs of the era do not use the minute stitches used for shifts; one wanted to be able to pull out the hem to remake the garment later.

Next turn under a few more inches to a hem, finger press it, stitch it, and repeat, ad infinitum until the hem is complete.

The example image below shows two stitches gathered up. I pulled them out of course, but would have anyway. Why? Look at the middle stitch -- actually a space between stitches, where the needle shows. Do you see how much needle is showing? Is that space the same size at the stitches to either side? No. It's longer. Unh, unh. For a neat hem that is not nice: pull it out and do it over. Force yourself to be a somewhat OCD and you will be happy with that hem for years.

Another example of the running-stitched hem.

That's all for today! Doesn't seem much, does it? Each little bit to me is special, a small practice in ancient skills.

A New Straight Shoe Last



The straight shoe last, side.

Over the last year or two I've been looking randomly, on and off, and not very hard, for a straight shoe last about the same size as my foot.

A few months ago I found one, hemmed and hawed for a few more months, and finally a few days ago took the few dollars and forked them over, fearing someone else would pick it up, fall in love with its gentle worn surface as I did, and purchase it.

Here it is, a straight last, hand-carved, in all its friendly, down-to-earth glory. Soft with the touch and grip of hands, roughened on the bottom with the prick of many nails, with interesting bevels from the work of the drawknife or whatever blades were used to carve it, that invite the holder to look at them and to think about the soul who created this handmade, entirely functional, and very human object. What about the soul or souls who used it to make shoes? What was that person like? Did ever a woman, perhaps, send in fabric uppers, already sewn, for finishing into slippers or boots, as we hear could happen? Did it travel West, or remain East? Was it perhaps European? What happened to this piece when the shoemaker no longer needed it or it fell out of fashion and was replaced by a model with a heel? Who before me was touched by its charm and saved it from the stove or fireplace or garbage heap?

From the style, I'd date it anywhere in the heelless era, from the Regency through part of the crinoline era, but perhaps someone has better or more correct information.

Yes, it is a straight last. Neither long side is completely, 100% even with the other, but there is no strong left-right shaping.

Really, it's a handsome thing, and will go on my desk as a paper weight. conversation piece, and remembrance of skills past, but I have other plans for it, too.

Plans or Dreams?
You see, I've been dreaming of two items.

Item 1: bedroom slippers that:

1. don't look like I ought to be wearing a house coat and pink plastic curlers
2. don't have spotted fur and remind you of dead cute animals
3. don't have maribou and remind you of cat glasses, bon-bons, and, well, pink plastic curlers again
4. aren't earth shoes
5. don't make a slap-slap sound when you walk in them and wake small children
6. don't make a shuffle-shuffle sound and scare small children

Yikes, a monster!

I'd like bedroom slippers that are:

1. really fitted to my foot so they won't shuffle, flop, drag, or drop
2. easily washable so they won't smell
3. cute as ballet shoes
4. won't scare small children

Enter the straight last. I already have Every Lady Her Own Shoemaker, and stash canvas, thread, an old sweater to felt for soles, and petersham. What I need is spare hours. Somewhere between now and June. I've already jettisoned plans to make a dress for an upcoming wedding as too much, and finishing the petticoat and spencer shan't take up every free-to-be-me hour, so...

Straight last, front: note the hand-carving and how it's not quite even.
Slightly flattened toe could be used from the 1790s through the early 1860s.

Now for item 2:

After the bedroom slipper trial run, extremely pointy-toed Regency heelless slippers made from silk from my stash. When? Unsure yet.

About that rounded toe: I can add leather, or styrofoam (without damaging the last), to the front to add a pointed toe. Could be, will be fiddly, but I've looked at the toes of enough extants to think I might be able to squeak it out, especially in a fabric shoe.

If neither experiment works? No matter. I still have the neatest paperweight and conversation piece. It's just so friendly and it begs to be handled and admired!

More Pictures



Straight last, other side; perfect for a Congress gaitor or side-closing half-boot.



Straight last, three-quarter view.

Straight last, heel view. Pretty basic heel, no shaping at all.
Again, note the marks left from hand-carving.



Straight last, bottom: these were used a lot.




Today I leave you with...small children! In a tree! With Flat Stanley! He's our visitor from Atlanta, sent to have some adventures with us, and with other folks, and to take the memories home with him as hand-written notes and photos pasted to his front. Noah and Christopher had him up a fir tree (yes, it's a hemlock, not a fir, long story) and then I hugged him on the way home as the wind tried to teach him to fly. One of the adventures resulted in a tear to his arm, but it's been repaired with a band-aid and he's still smiling.

Sleeveless / Convertible Spencer: Experiment Number 1 in Soie Ovale and Silk Chenille Embroidery

Weeeellll, experiment number one turned out two mediocre motifs; the silk ovale thread is too big for the tiny motifs, so the results are clunky, if shiny. Big sigh. I had hoped experiment number 2 would be all about improving the stitch quality; instead, I have to get new thread!




The silk embroidery work so far, under the light of a lamp, to better catch
glints and gleams.


Here are the two motifs, embroidered on a side piece so as to be relatively hidden. If you look carefully, you can see the drawn lines that mark the edges of this side piece. The pins have been used to attach the silk to the edge of my impromptu embroidery frame. The fabric color is corrected to be as close to lilac as possible; the appearance of the petals is a little redder than it should be, but the shine is decently accurate; the thread shines like crazy and it is also taking on the yellow of the incandescent lamp the work has been placed next to.

The completed sprigs; petals in soie ovale, and stems and leaves
in silk chenille.

The petals are sewn with Au Ver a Soie soie ovale from Hedgehog Handworks, the stems and leaves with Hand-Dyed Fiber's silk chenille, narrow width, the gilt spangles from Berlin Embroidery, and spangle and couching thread in Au Ver a Soie Paris twisted silk (a great all-rounder!).

What are the designs I am working from? The sprigs from the Met sleeveless spencer, of course! It was those sprigs that drew me to the funny little garment to begin with. They are handsome little things, not quite high fashion, but not totally naive or provincial, either, and the level of work is nice, when one considers that each motif varies, I estimate, from under an inch to a bit more than an inch and a half high.

I copied the designs as nearly as possible, and colored them in, in pencil, marking the direction of the embroidery threads as well as I could. The colors are a little off compared to the original: I don't have the neccessary shades in my pencil set, or in my embroidery threads, come to think of it. Am going for the spirit of the designs, not a total copy; after all, I am not using that shade of sea blue silk!

The Petals and Working with Soie Ovale

The soie ovale has a sheen like no other thread. Made up of lots of silk filaments, it is untwisted, so it can be made to lie flat and display the full shine of the filament. Being untwisted, each filament is gossamer, like a spider's thread. Together the filaments make rather a thick strand. Mary Corbet describes this silk as having body, and she is right.


The strand is almost impossible to divide into smaller strands, because it's just one bunch of filaments. The strands fuzz and bunch if disturbed by too much handling, and lose their perfect smoothness, even after being run through the fingers.


When worked into petal shapes a quarter to a half inch long, the strands are too beefy, and I have not the skill to lay them pefectly together; the results look coarse, and too naive, if nice an glowy. Look at the closeup below: the quilting pins to the right give you an idea of the size of the motif, and of the thread, and of how few stitches were needed to complete a petal, making the result coarse. (N.B. It turns out the coarse effect is due to how I did the stitches; it's not the fault of the thread. Please read experiment number 2, which came out much better.)



A closeup of a motif.



By contrast, when I examine the threads used in the Met spencer, they are about as thick as the sewing thread used for seams: that's very fine stuff, resulting in relatively exact motifs. They don't have tons of glow., either, through time and wear could have roughened the threads. (N.B. As I learned in experiment number 2, this was not a good motif to look at. Other motifs show a thicker flat silk thread, very nicely laid.)

The Met spencer: closeup of stitchery.

The soie ovale is interesting to work with. It is slippy, it is slidy! It comes off the needly! Even with a size ten or eleven needle, it slithers out of the tiny needle eye very easily. Further, the filaments catch on the fingers, so it's best to have soft hands, not work-roughened ones -- which for this gardening, child-rearing lady, a big Ha! to that -- and to moisturize them well. Laying the threads in laid stitch with a laying tool is essential. Thank goodness it is pleasant and produces a nice flat surface, although I have some glitches, this being my first time at it. And the glow, the wonderful, wonderful glow, pure color that gleams back at you. Even with its challenges, I like working with soie ovale and with much more practice and the right project, should get handsome results.

Yet for this project I need a flat silk that is divisible into much smaller strands so that the motifs won't look so coarse, and have determined on Eterna Silk. It's inexpensive for silk thread and Mary Corbet says it's nice, if not the best. For a garment exposed to wear, it's more sensible. Further, it divides into up to twelve strands, since the main strand has a slight twist. When divided like that, it's downright pennies a yard. (N.B. The Eterna silk turned out to be not nearly as nice as Au Ver a Soie: when well treated, it does glow, and it is easy to use, but it isn't the quality and I am not sure it's being made anymore. The maker's site doesn't answer email and the place I bought mine from is discontinuing it.)

The Stems and Leaves and Working With Silk Chenille

Mixing embroidery materials and stitches happened a lot, it seems. In my explorations of 18th century embroidered garments that have good close-ups (see my Pinterest board), I have found tamboured silk and chenille coexisting, flat or spun silk and chenille coexisting, and goldwork coexisting with both. So it was with confidence that I decided to do the spencer's floral motifs in a mix of flat silk, silk chenille, and gilt spangles.


The silk chenille is fun to work with. I love couching work, and the chenille silk is just plain cute. If you like cats, or any fuzzy animal, really, you'll like silk chenille: it teases you to pet it.

Mmm, mm, good: silk chenille on the spool.

Once I learned to keep the chenille on the reel while couching it down, rather than cutting short lengths, it was easier to work. Short lengths bounce around and are hard to coax into shape. The ends are a bit fussy; you have to secure them with an extra couching stitch and then snip off the end with the point of your scissors right on your fabric (eep!). Shaping the stems and leaves requires forethought, like tambour work or fine soutache work. You have to figure out how, and if, you can run a continuous piece of chenille in order to avoid lots of tiny lengths.


I will be experimenting awhile, as I explore how doubling back on the chenille to keep going with one strand, and placing one layer over another and so hiding colors when a contiuous color is not wanted, works. This project won't require much of that, though. Others will; I note that some extant garments keep to really simple shapes and few tones, while others are like silk painting in chenille, with lots of tiny bits of color impressionistically used to create gorgeous, rich, shaded flowers and swags.


Time Expended

Even with practice, this embroidery will be slow; I am rather chagrined if I bore you.  Each petal stitch is carefully placed and laid with the laying tool. The stems and leaves are faster. I expect two motifs per hour-plus session, with one motif per session when it's a carnation. Since the Met spencer is sparsely embroidered, I have perhaps twelve to fifteen hours ahead of peaceful, peaceable, meditative enjoyment, spread over weeks.


Very little happens fast on this blog, does it? How very un-21st century.


So, What's Next?


I will put the embroidery into hiatus until the Eterna silk arrives. Meantime, I will hem and finish the waistband on the lilac petticoat, the long seams of which I had hand-sewn in the car during our Easter
trip.

That means, next up you'll probably be treated to a petticoat post.

Ciao!

1790s Sleeveless / Convertible Spencer: Recutting The Neck and an Embroidery Teaser

Over the last week or so the spencer's neckline was recut to a lower, rounded shape. Here is where we started, with a very square neckline, as like to the Met spencer example as I was able to draft it and with seam allowances added: which makes the thing look rather too large. The pieces have been basted to make fitting easier.

Lining fitted, ready to be reshaped.

Reshaping the neckline was a matter folding the shoulder strap fabric into a pleasingly rounded shape, and then folding down the front pieces at the top to complete the curve, while folding up the bottom to shorten the spencer. Here are the rough folded results, pinned carefully. You can see that I have the image of the model spencer up on my computer to aid in the process.

You can see the neckline dip, but it's hard to see the curvature in the
shoulder strap part of the neckline. Trust me, it's there.

The model spencer, Metropolitan Museum of Art, number  C.I.38.100.10, has been dated from 1800-1830, and it has a very high waistline. Since my spencer is late 1790s and I want to fit it to my cross-front dress, I kept the waistline a little lower. I also recut the center closure of the front pieces so that they would lace shut or hook-and-eye shut; I cannot overlap them and pin them as originally planned because of the neckline ruche trim.

I took off the lining, marked all the folds with blue tailor's chalk, cut the basting threads, and laid the pieces all flat. Then, using the rough marks as a guide, I drew clearer, truer curves with the chalk, then took scissors and cut the new shape. The rounding in the neckline continues beyond the shoulders to the back, so I had to cut new shoulder straps and reshape the back neckline to a more rounded shape as well.

Here is what the pattern pieces look like now. The backs of the shoulder straps are particularly wide, because the curve of the neckline really pulls in there. The seam allowances are still very wide, too, for "just in case". They'll be trimmed later.

Recut lining; seam marks included in chalk.

Next up, reading for embroidering the fashion fabric in small sprigs, in soie ovale, silk chenille, and true gilt spangles! The sprigs I copied directly from that Met spencer. Here is a peep:

First experiment in silk chenille and soie ovale.

That's not plastic thread you're looking at, that's the fantastic shine of flat reeled (filament) silk floss, soie ovale from Au Ver a Soie. Like the silk chenille on the little rolls, way fiddly to embroider with, and a very different beast than cotton floss, spun silk thread, or crewel wool, but with experimentation, I will get the hang of it.

Today I leave you with a wish from the boys: they would really like a window seat, they say, and until I removed him for safety's sake, Christopher sat on the window sill to show me how pleasant window sitting is.

1790s Sleeveless / Convertible Spencer: Neckline Modification

Last I wrote about this project, I'd just fit the toile. Since then the silk has been dyed lilac, and now is the time to cut out the garment. Yet I can't seem to confidently take scissors in hand to the lining fabric, to create the second toile that will then be the pattern for cutting the silk.

What's the barrier, besides mowing the lawn, polishing windows, weeding, weeding and more weeding, laundry and more laundry, work, childcare, and a happy trip to family and friends in Georgia to celebrate Easter?

It's the neckline. I'm just not happy with it. Here is the toile:

The blue marks show where the toile is cut now; the red ones show the up-to-now modifications. After all, I was going for this sort of front: very low, very open...really 18th century short bodice sans sleeves. (If you look at the endless string of posts on this project, you'll get the history.)

You see, this design might do well with a ruche in the back, like my fashion plate inspiration model below, but can you see the ruche working in the front? Of course not. It would look really silly to ruche narrow straps and then a broad expanse of low neckline. You see, in the effort to make the poor little garment do so many things, I initially thought to tack on the ruche and then remove it as desired, for a different look. Ditto the epaulettes.

I've been looking at ruched spencers since the project began: the Met has lots of them, but not until Sabine of Kleidung um 1800 finished her cotton variation on the theme this past week did I really focus on my own ruching plan...and decided that I'd better rethink the front.

The best plan, I thought, would be a low rounded neck, ruched, or better yet, a vee neck, ditto. Luckily, an extant comes easily to hand, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has quite a selection of spencers, a good number of them featuring a ruched or plaited neckline. This one is perfect in cut for my purposes. It's center-front closing, cut very deeply in the neckline, and has a narrow ruching.

Black spencer, 1800-1830, Metropolitan
Museum of Art, number

C.I.38.100.10

The Met included a fascinating photograph from an exhibition long past showing the spencer on a dressed model.

The Met gives a wide date range for the garment, and given the tiny diamond back, it is very unlikely to be 18th century, though the silk seems to be. No matter, the front cut is reminiscent of late 18th century fashion plates, such as this sleeveless spencer, or body, from 1799.

London and Paris Fashions, December 1799
(but appearing in the January1800 number)
Image Bunka Gakuen Library.

 The front works so much better with my wrap-front dress...

Just to show another favorite example. Here's a Met extant with the low round neck, a good bit lower, I might add, then some of the other specimens the Met has with the popular neckline treatment. Here, the ruching has become a careful pleated flat frill, sewn near the neckline, with a header.

Late 18th to early 19th century quilted blue
spencer, with pleated neckline frill. Metropolitan
Museum of Art, number

C.I.50.8.14.

Most of the other examples, and in fact my inspiration fashion plate, employ quite a wide ruche. Sabine did in her spencer, too. However, I think a wide ruche or plaiting, lovely as it is, would overwhelm my sleeveless spencer, so the narrow version in the black spencer above is more appropriate.

There, now I can rest easy tonight. Sometime later this week or next, as time allows, it will be time to cut the lining!

p.s. Ruched jackets were nothing new. The Victoria and Albert has this delightful printed and quilted jacket from France. Look at that neckline!

Printed and quilted linen jacket, France.
c 1785-1790. V&A, number

T.219-1966

Lilac, Lilacs, and a New Look

The lilacs are in full bloom, and the sleeveless spencer and petticoat silk are lilac-colored!

The silk is true lilac color, although I suppose, since it matches my violets, it could be called that color, too. It was dyed (from the same stash of old cream silk almost slubless dupioni I've had for years) in the washing machine with Idye from Dharma Trading. Easy to use and entirely mess free. The color of the silk when wet was MUCH darker than this, more a royal purple, so when using Idye at least, one must trust that the color will come out well. I was worried it would be too dark and wondered whether I had left it in the dye too long (30 minutes, less than the 50-60 that Idye suggested); had I taken it out earlier it would have been too pastel colored. As it stands, it's nearly the exact shade needed.

From London and Paris Fashions, Bunka Gakuen Library

You can read more about this ensemble in Making the Wrap-Front Dress Do Double and Triple Duty.

At the Jane Austen Festival in Louisville in July, I will probably wear an afternoon variation of this ensemble one day with my wrap-front dress -- with the petticoat showing and a day hat -- and on the other day will wear the sleeveless spencer over the wrap-front dress, with no petticoat showing. A third choice is to wear the petticoat and the spencer together, and add muslin sleevelets to the spencer. Love all the choices!

Lilacs and a New Look

Here are the lilacs in our garden. No purple tint, but definitely a royal fragrance.

Now for the new look. It's an experiment. Because I am doing so much embroidery, with more in the works, it seemed appropriate to feature embroidery in the blog design. Am not entirely happy with it: the header needs centering and I chose the background from a copyright-free image uploaded to Wikimedia Commons from the Victoria and Albert: it's a detail of a mantua's petticoat. The petticoat is from decades previous to "my" decades, and it needs Photoshop work. There are other glitches...more edits over time.

Today I leave you with...

...a shot of the boys watering everything in reach, including themselves. We have had a highly irregular, extraordinary, Technicolor springtime. Everything in bloom at once. From the ground up: vivid green grass spangled with violets and spring beauties, above them nod tulips, azealeas in glory and shading the tulips, under the blow of crabapple and pear and cherry trees, blooming alongside redbuds, and even just over a week ago, forsythia, and over all, most of the trees in leaf, even our walnut. Only the daffodils and very early flowers have gone. I feel like I've walked into Elven territory, it's all so verdant, except that in my heart I know it's not natural and I fret at what summer will bring, if it's 80 degrees now...



Shorts and almost swimming on April 4.

Will Mother Nature shout "April Fools"?