A book of old embroidery, 1921
note: kbsalazar pointed out in the comments section that you can find this piece in the V&A on-line database here. Thanks for sharing!
One of the things Isis and I are working on now is making warm winter cloths. Isis just finished a pair of lovely needlebound mittens and is now sewing a woolen overdress. I'm making a liripipe and a linen chemise, and I also need a really warm dress to wear over my brown one.
Finally, I've finished my smocked apron:-). I've already worn it during the Medieval Week in Visby, but I haven't got pictures of me wearing it. Sometimes, this type of events goes by in a whirlwind... (But then sometimes other people do have the pictures you need! Isis inserted some here)
Here are some final technical details and "do's and don'ts":
Dillemma! An evening of total emotional unrest, stress and lots of cursing. I made the veil part of this new frilled headdress four centimeters too long for it to sit right. How I could have made a gross miscalculation like this is a total mystery to me, but somehow I managed.
Now how to solve this?
1. The lazy option: make a horizontal seam in the neck and cut away the access fabric
2. The die-hard option: take apart the whole veil, cut a new veil in the right size, and put the frills back on.
Option one doesn't feel really comfortable, option two ... well option two would take me right back to where I was in May. I could not possibly finish the veil in time for Visby then. It's too much hours of work. Too many teeny tiny stitches and sowing frills in place.
I'm not even sure if I could mentally handle option two. This veil has become almost a curse over the past few months. I want so badly to just get it finished.
Oh!
Help!
Remember the northern German frilled veil I was working on? Here you can see where I was with it last September. The photos above show where I got last May. I wanted to get it finished by the event in Lütjenburg, but utterly failed.
It is almost done now, only 3 straight hemming seams to do. Hoorray! I will make so pics of the finished veil in Wisby, hopefully while it is being worn by its new owner!
Hi all!
As I logged in to blogger yesterday I noticed Medieval Silkwork has reached the mile stone of 300 blog followers! It seems quite unbelievable that in just 5 years (or even a little less) our blog has found such a large public of regular readers!
We would like to thank you all for your support, interest and enthusiasm over the past few years. Sharing our research and creative projects for you has been enormously rewarding and stimulating for the both of us.
So, a big thanks to you all!
I just came across this beautiful piece of work, a letter pouch which once belonged to Michiel Adriaenszoon de Ruyter. It is made in a red velvet fabric with red ribbon along the edges and wonderful metal thread embroidery. It contained a letter dated 1663.
The purse is now in the 'Zeeuws Maritiem Museum' in the Netherlands.
These are us and our men during a quiet moment in the afternoon in the Historical Open Air Museum Eindhoven (HOME). Isis is wearing a gray dress and her man is sitting next to her. I (Machteld) am wearing a brown dress, my Birgitta cap and a belt made by my husband. He's sitting next to me with our daughter on his lap.
Laurens, thanks for taking this picture!
Yes, I wanted a Birgitta cap too :-) I just finished the embroidered band that ties the cap together, and I hope I will finish it before the HOME Textile Fair in Eindhoven this weekend... Isis wrote a post about this cap and a paper:
Dahl, C.L. & I. Sturtewagen, 2008, The Cap of St. Birgitta, Medieval Clothing and Textiles vol. IV, pp. 99-129
My husband found me a copy of Kroos, R. (1970), Niedersachsische Bildstickereien des Mittelaters, Berlin: Deutscher Verlag fur Kunstwissenschaft . Lucky me :-) I wrote a review about this wonderful book here. If you're interested in German whitework embroidery, it's a mustread. It can be quite expensive, (he paid 140 euros, on the German E-bay site), but it's a heavy book, packed with information (2,5 kilo,a catalogue of 218 pages and an additional 427 pages of black and white images, in one volume).
When I browsed through its pages, I was reminded of this embroidery. According to Kroos (1970), it's not known what it was used for. I think it would make a lovely design for a tablecloth :-)
No, I didn't miscalculate the length of fabric this time :-) I wanted to make a smock sampler to get some more practice and then I thought “Why not turn it into an apron for my daughther”? (She's almost 2 now).
Here are some of the things I've learned along the way:
I accidentily came across this image of a knitting Madonna. This is a painting of the Holy Family, attributed to Ambrogio Lorenzetti (ca. 1345) of Siena. Size 54.5 x 25.5 cm. I think I have seen it in person years ago in the Meermanno Museum in The Hague, but didn't notice the knitting back then. I do remember drooling over the thread reel standard.
First of all, thanks to Katrin from A Stitch in Time for posting this link! If you're interested in medieval textiles and clothing, be sure to visit her blog.
The York Archeological Trust put some of their out of print publications online for free. You might be interested in the one below, and take look at their archive for more. I copied the abstract below from their website:
The Archaeology of York 17/15, Finds from Medieval York, Craft, Industry and everyday life by Patrick Ottaway and Nicola Rogers