Dress Diary: Birgitta's Cap - Centre Seam Embroidery Part the Second

[ragnvaeig]

As of yesterday morning, I still found the weaving part of the interlaced insertion stitch pretty terrifying, but I think I've worked it out. This seam has been a learning process, but as the embroiderer of Birgitta's Cap missed stitches, too, I didn't feel too much pressure to create perfection. This was compounded by the fact that no set of

Comments

[peteyfrogboy]

Have you tried waxing the thread instead, or is there a reason that wouldn't work? I don't do much embroidery, let alone with linen, so it's not really something I know a lot about.

[ragnvaeig]

This is only the second time I've been brave enough to embroider with linen, so I've never tried it. Did they do that in the 14th century?

[holyschist]

I don't have any citations (yet), but I'd be very surprised if they didn't at least wax sewing thread to strengthen and smooth it. It may well be one of those practices that's so common-sense people didn't really bother writing it down, but perhaps traces might remain on extant textiles if someone looked for it.

I don't normally wax embroidery thread, but I'd probably try it if I were using linen with this type of embroidery.

P.S. I'd consider myself intermediate, but I'm still boggling. These are my eyes looking at your pictures: O_O

[ragnvaeig]

Forgive me an archaeology Ph.D. moment. I haven't any evidence that it was done that way, and until someone shows me a piece that tests positive for beeswax on the linen thread, I'll use water, which won't leave a trace when it's dry.

Really, it's not you, it's me--grad school conditioned me this way, and I have a special kind of crazy. It's amazing that I make exceptions for cotton sewing thread, really, but we can't let the brain weasels win all the time.

[basal_surge]

My disfunctional memory thinks there is documentation late-ish period for wax/resin mixes used on linen thread in shoe making; I'll hit up our shoe geek for details and see if I can quote you a reference if one exists.

[holyschist]

Mid-period, and almost exclusively used by the 14th century. Which makes sense; I'm not sure unwaxed linen thread would hold up to the stresses of shoe-making.

[holyschist]

Oh, understood. I haven't had a chance to go hunting for documentation as yet. Actually, you'd probably have to look more for documentary sources, since traces usually don't survive on fabric. I think it would a research project worth doing, since beeswax is going to work better than water/spit if you can document it.

You can definitely document waxed linen thread for shoemaking from about the 12th century on. Quite a few references in primary sources:

http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/histshoe/index.htm
http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/shoe/THREAD.HTM

[ragnvaeig]

I did know that it was useful for leatherworking, but does that really translate over into embroidery? They're really two different crafts.

[holyschist]

I think it probably translates over to sewing. Embroidery, I would generally say say "no," but it might be plausible for linen embroidery that's functioning as a seam. But examples of this type of embroidery are probably so rare that we'd never be able to definitively prove it. I would be inclined out of curiosity to do a small sample with waxed thread to see if it makes the embroidery dramatically easier without affecting the appearance.

[xrunamokbabyx]

In Janet Arnolds Patterns of Fashion 4 they have a detailed picture of an underside of a ruff where they used drops of wax to hold the shapes together, so I don't see how they would use it applied to shaping but not for construction.

[holyschist]

It was sometimes used to seal pinks, too. But I doubt that's going to be good enough documentation. :)