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[justawench]

Come and read about Printed Cotton Bans in the 18th century! Be shocked at the harsh punishments for selling calico, and feel sorry for the poor wool producers (until they start stripping people naked, that is).

Also, if you are so inclined and have 17th century clothing knowledge, please comment on my post about a jacket in a 1620s portrait,

Comments

[virginiadear]

No definitive answers and therefore no definitive help, either, here, but in the Sixteenth century (1500s), during the latter part of it, fabric was "stamped" with a hot iron to impress (or burn) the design, which could then be either painted or embroidered. But if you were going to pay for embroidery, you might as well pay the embroiderer or embroideress for having drawn the design onto the fabric before working it with silks, as to pay someone to embroider a stamped design in silks. (Wool, or "crewel" embroidery was for the most part not done until the Eighteen century/1700s.)

(Why do I have the feeling I've commented on this portrait before? Have I done...?)

[justawench]

I'm sure you have as I posted it once before, but I had locked that post so it wasn't visible to the whole world.

I've never heard of the hot iron thing, but I don't know much about clothing prior to the 18th century. I was also thinking that large round blobs would be a rather pointless shape to embroider, being time-consuming and requiring a lot of thread for a rather boring look. Small circles seem unnecessarily hard to embroider too, for just the geometric effect, but I know I can't really apply my modern sensibilities to four hundred year old designs.

[virginiadear]

For larger areas ("larger" being determined by the embroiderer or the embroiderer's client---there were broderie guilds, donchaknow---and what could be afforded), "couching" was the way to go, getting maximum visibility and virtually no waste of the embroidery thread. "Couching" is to lay or bed the silk thread or the metallic thread on the surface being decorated, and to secure it with tiny stitches taken on the surface by threads carried on the back side of the work. As seen in some of the examples at the sites given below, sometimes the securing stitches were used visibly for effect, often quite pleasing

[justawench]

No problem! I was aware of couching (though no expert). Do you have any embroidery experience? Do you think that stitching tiny circles would be way too annoying for the result?

I was looking at 17th century blackwork but it all seems to be vining florals except for this example. I never found any with just dots, not that that means anything with the very few surviving examples.