Unpicking Threads of History

OK - I've now written two pages on the topic, which includes a graph. I based the findings on the 78 sweet bags with pictures good enough to be able to tell something about the number of stitches used. I must caveat this, however, that since I did not examine them in person for this area of research, that there may be a larger number of distinct stitches per bag than what I found. These are minimum numbers.

I've been futzing along, updating my desktop wiki with info on sweet bags (I now have 152 listed, though I do not consider all of them part of the canonical core) and other Elizabethan stitches stuff. Then I entered some embroidered items in a judged needlework show. Shows like this are useful because it gives me an insight into what some people consider important about works in the modern world. And since my works are inspired strongly by historical objects or images, it gives me a new way of looking at them.

So I submitted my little half-sized sweet bag for judging. I use it as name tag and cell-phone holder. Since I got a bigger cell phone recently, I needed to expand the bag by making it deeper. So I added some Ladder Stitches, more Plaited Braid, and a line of the Plaited Braid with a Twist that I recently redacted from Cardinal Wolsey's nightcap. I'm pretty proud of having figured it out, so I made sure to mention that in the Artist's Statement (I keep wanting to call it documentation). The piece did not get a ribbon (shrug), and did get the following comment that I might want to consider using fewer stitches.

That got me wondering - so how many stitches did I use, and how many are used on the typical historical sweet bag? I used a unique stitch (found on two bags) for the background,Plaited Braid for the stems, Tent stitch as a basic motif stitch, with accents of Corded Detached Buttonhole and Bullion stitches,another stitch around the mouth, and the new edge has more Plaited Braid, plus Ladder stitch, and the Plaited Braid with a Twist. That is 8 different stitches. Ok, maybe that's a lot - I didn't know.

So I spent this afternoon going through all my sweet bag photos, and I can definitely say that I am not alone. There are at least three historical sweet bags with 8 different stitches on them. But there are no sweet bags in my data set with more stitches, and most have fewer. So while my bag is within historical parameters, it is also a totally fair comment.

And now that I've done the raw research today, tomorrow I can compare the results, and see what kind of distribution of numbers of stitches are most common, and how they are apportioned.

I am very satisfied with the comment from the show - it provided me with a new way of looking at the photos I have, and a new way of looking at the historical bag. Later this weekend, it should turn into a couple pages or so of analysis as intro to the Stitches chapter.

Fascinating!

Been pushing to finish the handout for a class on Elizabethan linear metal-thread stitching. The handout at the moment is at 28 pages, and here I stop for awhile, since the class is to be taught in 3 days. Been working on it off and on since November 2011, and I don't even want to think how many hours have gone into its production.

Also been working on the desktop wiki. Have now got more than 150 sweet bags, plus lots of coifs, night caps, and misc Elizabethan embroidery. Once all the sweet bags are in place, I can do some more data mining. I have done some research on stitches (see above) that shows me more kinds of stitches than I had thought were out there.

That's about it = I looked at the last time I had blogged here, and was astonished that it was so long ago. So I felt I needed to post.

Make that 149 sweet bags today - the new one is from info about it on the National Trust website. There is no photo, so it does not really add much to the total information available about sweet bags.

Have been adding to the desktop wiki with information about sweet bags - am now up to 148 of them, but that includes some that I would call tangential sweet bags - that is, they are done in beadwork and are usually somewhat later in date. But still... Have also been collecting info on coifs in the same wiki. More coifs than bags, but I haven't gotten through even making making the records for all I've got pictures of - about 170 so far. And the overwhelming majority are in a scrolling stems design style.

Have restarted the Elizabethan Metal Thread sampler, and restarted the instruction booklet that goes with it, as well. The two versions of the sampler thus each have their own instruction booklet. But there is a great deal of overlap, of course. Have created more stitch diagrams to go with them. Have also been collecting more non-plaited-braid stem filling variations. There are quite a few of them out there!

Have started a new article on stitch names. It goes into a bit more depth on the stitch names used in the sampler booklet.

I feel like I cannot return to the Sweet Bag book until I have finished populating the wiki, because I plan to use the wiki to get at group information. But I really feel I should be shopping it around, too. But there is little enthusiasm for it from me, at the moment. I feel I am past it, and want to go on to something else. But I should get this one out into the world. Net result: not much happening on that front.

I've gotten very positive response from the small embroidered version of my Coat of Arms, done in Elizabethan Metal Thread stitches. This has inspired me to publish the directions for the stitches used on the piece. However, I don't want the world using my arms as their project - that is just wrong, and would make all SCA people twitch.

So I think I will do something similar - thanks to Esther at the tournament yesterday for the idea of doing a small book cover. I want to have one dragon on the cover, because I think part of the impact of the piece is that it uses the Elizabethan metal thread techniques to create motifs that are NOT flowers and leaves. Given that Henry VII adopted the Welsh Dragon as one of his symbols, it is appropriate to the Tudor timeperiod.

I'm thinking of using a similar plan as that of my arms -- that is, three items in pale. The middle item will be a dragon. At the moment, the top and bottom "charges" will likely be knot work. They may be adaptations of something found on Welsh stone crosses surviving from the post-Roman period. Or they might be adapted from some of the Renaissance knot work shown on King Henry VIII's clothing. In other words, I want to create a design that did not exist then, but whose elements are compatible with the time period of the stitches used.

So this would be a self-published book, with diagrams, stitch descriptions, and photos of the in-progress piece. And that would give me something to sell while I try to get the sweet bag book published.

The dragon will be gold. The Welsh dragon is famous for being red. This is not red. At the moment, I am planning to make the background of the book cover of blue silk, just like my arms, because I like gold against blue. Am wondering if I should consider either a red background (like the Welsh dragon itself) or a green one (like the base of the Welsh flag) -- Opinions welcome!

The knotwork (or whatever the other design or designs are) may be either gold or silver -- have not yet decided.

Since I will be presenting this at Costume College next week, but was out of town (in England, no less) until last Sunday. So this is the first chance I've had to get back to this.

Sweet Bags presentation is now 76 charts. For a 1 hour, 45 minute talk, that means about a chart a minute. At least I know know how fast I'll be going.

Intro: 8 charts - sources of my info; why listen to me. Complete
Chapter 1: 8 charts - what is a sweet bag, how do we know about them, who used them, etc. Complete (if cursory)
Chapter 2: 7 charts - materials with pictures of each one. Complete
Chapter 3: 23 charts - stitches with pix for background, motifs, and stems. Need to id pix of Kelim, laidwork, corded detached buttonhole, Plaited Braid, Ladder. Otherwise complete.
Chapter 4: 11 charts - construction. incomplete. I see another 10 charts or so.
Chapter 5: 19 charts - Layouts need quote on "slips in lozenges", otherwise complete

Moved Chapter 3 to the end, as it is aimed specifically at embroiderers. Construction is more a costumer thing, I think.

Time spent: 5 hours

I'm going to England shortly. It has been planned for about six months, but time for detailed planning was hijacked by a couple feasts that my husband was head chef for - one expected, which meant we would do detailed planning after that feast (late March). Shortly thereafter, a friend really, really wanted him to do a full feast for 100 in early June. So he agreed. Planning for that sucked away most of the rest of our advance planning time for England.

So this means we've been doing the detailed itinerary planning in the last month before our departure. Now we have places to stay, we have our Britrail passes, we have an idea of what days we will be where. So finally, a couple weeks before our departure, I am in a position to see whether I can get behind the scenes at some of the museums, and see their embroidered bags. This is a long-winded way of saying that I didn't get a chance to coordinate anything with a reasonable lead time. Which means that I might not get to do any extra curricular stuff, and I accept that.

But if I don't ask, I certainly won't see these extra items. So I wrote some letters (via e-mail). So far I've gotten one yes and one no. I thought others might want to see an example of the query letter I wrote.

( example of query letter )

Have mostly been repurposing the Sweet Bags info.

1. populating a desktop wiki (VoodooPad) of Elizabethan embroidery
2. writing a powerpoint chart version of the sweet bag info
3. adding to the list of interlaced stitches used for stems
4. Doing some small bits on the Flora book

Proofreading other people's work
1. Molly September
2. Taming the Stash Monster GCC
3. .... I'm sure there was at least one other...

I just realized that I did not do a summary of 2010 writing projects at the end of the year. So this is a retrospective to capture that information. I came across the 2010 KWHSS Proceedings, and recalled just how many articles I had submitted!

Books worked on

Field Guide to Elizabethan Embroidered Flora - some work
Coifs and Cross-cloths book - some work

3-13-2010 - computer disk failure. A hard crash, and most of my backups were not accessible. I got lots of stuff back, but not everything. Lost all of the high-res shots of the sweet bag embroidery in progress. Lost some intermediate versions of the Sweet Bag book.

April - Jacqui Carey's Sweet Bags book generally available. It blows mine out of the water by its mere existence.

5-1-2010 - My Sweet Bags Book rejected by publisher

June 2010 - started incorporating the copy edits from editor into the sweet bags book
July 2010 - restructured book a bit, put chapter 7 into chapter 3.
Oct 2010 - started the "omit needless words" pass through the book. Ended up removing (or moving to footnotes) about 10.5K words, through chapter 6 (skipping chapters 2, 8,9, 10 so far). Finished in November. I feel like I'm just stirring the pot here, not making progress.
Dec 2010 - bid on a sweet bag offered over the internet. Did not get it.

KWHSS Proceedings Articles- June 2010

"They Wrote Books" - a list of Insular scribes of the first millennium, and the books they wrote.
"On Angel Wings" - compendium of angel wing research -- colors and shapes
"Insular Manuscript Colors" - short article summarizing info from several sources that did spectroscopic analysis of pigments
"Drawn Knotwork Illumination of the First Millennium" - how to tell Insular knotwork from Coptic, Roman, and Islamic.
"Book Dragons and How to Draw Them" - Gothic and Romanesque grotesques from manuscripts.