Tricia writes today. This is the second of four blogs she sent me before she left for Europe for two weeks. I tend not to read ahead when she sends me a few at once, but this time I’ve checked, and she answers most of your questions in the next three entries. I was going to skip tomorrow as it is a holiday in the States, but I can’t do that to you . . . look for Tricia’s #3 tomorrow and #4 Saturday. I’ll take a stab at the unanswered questions on Sunday. She sent no photo with this entry; I’ll repost the one from a couple of days ago. I believe all the different lines of stitching are the same stitch with different gold threads. Before you wonder where that nearly completed book is, blame the jacket - I think some of the time she had set aside to finish that book on gold stitches was actually spent on this project. Mea culpa.

Well, we have been asked a million questions about Plaited Braid over the last few months. And there has been a very lively set of exchanges between Jill, myself, other teachers, and readers of the blog who have been doing trials of their own. So I guess it is finally time to summarize this topic!

There are many people who have been on the trail of ‘Plaited Braid’ for years. I will try to recognize as many here as I can dig up in my memory! That said, there are two subjects to talk about. First, when we say ‘Plaited Braid Stitch’, what do we identify as that stitch? The second is how to do it.

On the first topic, I have been working on a book of gold stitches taken from 16th and 17th century English samplers and embroideries for years. Nearly complete, I have found almost 40 individual stitches worked in gold with different mechanics. Very few of them are identified in stitch anthologies. Even more frustrating is the
existence of several ‘braid’ stitches. Because they are difficult to decode, they have always ended up on the back burner. Now I have been going through my research photos trying to answer these questions.

What I have found is that there seems to be at minimum two stitches which can be called ‘plaited braid’. For awhile I thought that maybe we were looking at stitch density differences or maybe a bad stitcher here and there. But I have located one spot sampler where a queen stitch motif is filled in with both of the variants. Even more compelling is that one is worked in silver and the other gold. They repeat along the pattern in the same positions, implying that the stitcher identified them as distinctly different stitches. While I can’t share the photos from the museum here, one has a single V going down the middle and the other looks more woven like a herringbone.

So I believe that there was a family of ‘braid stitches’. In this family I also place stitches with related stitch mechanics such as the knot stitch (often called Braid Stitch). Now this creates difficulty because when you examine the published diagrams for “plaited braid”, the authors haven’t identified the objects they worked from or shown pictures. Therefore it is hard to say if any one set of directions is
“CORRECT” or “WRONG”.

Tomorrow I will talk about the directions I am familiar with and which ones we will be using.

Tricia

Lacey guest writes today:

This is Lacey here. I am the other intern here at the wardrobe department and I have a story about my experience here at Plimoth that just needs to be shared.

To begin, I am very much a girl of the south. My mother is from the northwest, but she’s the oddball there. My dad is from Deep South Texas and my brother and I were born in Georgia. I then lived in Heidelberg, Germany for my formative years, where the culture is of course not American, but that southern American hospitality still reigned in my home. When we moved back to the US it was again to the south, though most southerners would argue that Northern Virginia is not, in fact, the south. Needless to say coming here to Plimoth is the first time I have ever been in New England.

Working here as an intern is more than I had ever dreamed of, even after I turned in the application earlier this year. That being said, I am finding it incredibly hard to live on air and sunshine, money definitely has a certain appeal. (we were able to offer Emily and Lacey internships with housing but without stipends - jmh) When some of the other girls and I were offered a job working the Plimoth Cinema in the evenings and on weekends we snatched at the opportunity. Its not a lot of money but it makes my mother’s frugal child feel a little bit better about her bank account.

Now we move to the meat of the story. On Saturdays the Cinema has a concession stand with popcorn, candy and hot dogs so the moviegoers can make an event of it. This past Saturday I was to work the concession stand by myself for the first time. When the time came to sell the first hot dog, which by the way are two for three dollars, I came upon a dilemma. The hot dog buns were like nothing I had ever seen before. To me they looked something like an excessively fat slice of bread that had been shortened about three inches.

I held it like one would a normal, to me, hot dog bun and tried to find the slice. Failing to find the slice I looked all over the places I would have thought to find it. Now those of you northerners reading this who have never seen what constitutes a normal hot dog bun for the rest of us, its something like a mini sub roll and opens on the side of the bun. Never finding the slice on those first buns, I mangled the poor man’s hot dog buns to the dissatisfaction of my poor confused brain.

Three dogs later I realized these buns did in fact have a slice, and that it was in the top of the bun. I was mortified that I had missed this. Later, between the two showings I mentioned it to my boss who commented that when she had gone to college somewhere outside of New England, she had not known what to do with the sub roll buns and had her mother keep her supplied in hot dog buns.

Jill again. When Lacey told me this story, I decided to get some pictures of the buns in question. A thousand words and all. I just happened to have some New England hot dog rolls at home. My daughter prefers them because they’re more stable on the plate. I checked the grocery store yesterday, and the ones like this with the slice on the top say “frankfurter buns” and the ones Lacey knows, with the slice on the side, are called “hot dog buns.” There’s no end to what you can learn from the Embroiderers’ Story. Thank you for all the comments, and I’ll be posting answers as well as three more posts from Tricia over the next days. I am having BIG computer troubles at home so if you’re waiting for an answer from me on something - Carolyn and Robbin - I’ll try calling you. Thanks for your patience. ETA: that is my horrifically messy kitchen table around the edges of those pictures. The housecleaning fairies are on vacation this week.

Tricia writes today:

If you remember, months ago we were trying out gold threads for the plaited braid stitch. Bill Barnes of Golden Threads had made a silk core wrapped with gilt strip for us. When it stitched, it was just too stiff to use, which was a surprise to me. When I gave him my comments, he responded that he had used three ends of Soie Ovale for the core and would I wait a few weeks for another sample using just two ends. He was sure it would work. Well - always trust the master!

We finally got the sample two weeks ago (another one of those international shipping dramas delayed it). Shown here is the sample alone and also stitched next to the previous samples that I had done. The thread is thinner but it still gives a nice and dense plaited braid. More importantly, it stitches easily. Well, as easily as a gold thread can! So I gave the green light to have miles of it made.

A big thanks goes out to Access Commodities who have been coordinating this for us. They are the distributor of Au Ver a Soie thread and supply the silks that Bill is using for the thread. Lamora’s expertise with international shipping is one of the prime reasons we can make this happen!

Tricia

Hi Mary, I’m glad it made you laugh. jmh

This yellow rain jacket showed up during one of our sessions this spring. I thought it belonged to someone at Plimoth but it’s been hanging around for months and no one has claimed it, so I was wondering, did you leave it here? If you’re coming back we can save it for you. If not let me know and we’ll ship it home. It’s getting tired of talking to the period garments all day. They won’t break character.

I mentioned that we were, a few weeks ago, concentrating on getting clothing ready for our child volunteers. We’ve expanded the program this year (only to children of Plimoth staff, though) and are introducing nine new colonial children to the 1627 Village site this week. Colleen asked when one might find children on site. We’re not holding them to particular schedules, being youngsters and volunteers and all, but this is what I know. You’re likely to find children on site any day except Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the time being. You’re much less likely to find any on those awful, suffocating hot & humid days we sometimes get. The children aren’t scheduled through the front desk, so calling ahead, unfortunately, won’t get you any more information. The children are pretty excited, though, and want to be on site. With nine to choose from you’re pretty likely to find some most days.

Next Thursday, July 3 there will be a “squadron muster” in the English Village and I believe most of the children are planning to be on site for it. In the 17th century the colonists were very serious about defending their colony, and being prepared to defend it, both from potential European rivals (Spanish and French, most notably) and Native peoples. We have historical references to the colonists “exercising their arms”(arms & armor, not limbs) periodically, and the squadron muster will be a demonstration of what that might have looked like. We have no record of any attack on the Plymouth Colony by either Europeans or Natives up to and including the year portrayed on site - 1627.

A couple of days ago the children got into their period clothing, most of them for the first time except for try-ons. They practiced first person interpreting on our Colonial Education Site with plain-clothed interpreters for pretend visitors. Here are a couple of pictures Penny caught of their work that day.

A couple of days ago Mary asked if we have another Big Project in the pipeline for when the jacket is finished. She wrote “don’t cringe” but what I actually responded with was a sort of manic giggle. Yes, we sort of do have another or few big ideas. One is the 2009 Symposium, which I wrote about yesterday. The exhibit that the jacket will be part of is actually a pretty big project, and pretty “wardrobe heavy” which means lots of hands-on work for us. There’s enough talk about a book about creating this jacket that I think that is very likely, even probable. We’ve even started thinking about another big Volunteer Project, but I’m so not ready to let that cat out of the bag right now. It isn’t likely to be something very similar to the jacket, but it ,will be similarly awesome, ambitious and unique.