Showing posts with label heritage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label heritage. Show all posts

Monday 15 January 2024

Carolyn came in her underwear and it was brilliant 😮

Now, it's not quite what it seems... Carolyn is one of our very talented members and belongs to The 1635 Household - a Jacobean re-enactment group. They mainly deal with domestic life rather than battles and the like. Carolyn kindly agreed to come and talk to us about Jacobean costume and what a fascinating morning we had. She brought lots of her 'higher-end folk' outfits - all of which she has made herself and also embroidered - her work is absolutely stunning, it was a real privilege to see them and hear about the process of designing and making.

Carolyn does lots of research to try and be as authentic as possible and takes inspiration from period portraits and original pieces found in museum collections. Her clothes are made from authentic materials - wool, linen, silk, taffeta and silk velvet. She also makes lace where possible. Thought has to be given to budget and practicalities such as washing.

Carolyn brought shoes, hose and ties, smock, fitted kirtle aka a pair of bodies, ruffs, collars , jackets, skirts and coifs. 

She started in her underwear - the shoes to kirtle... 


...and then gradually added the other layers explaining each as she went. As all items of clothing are made to fit the wearer everything was far more comfortable than you might imagine. 

This jacket was inspired by the Maidstone jacket and has a lovely peapod motif and looks stunning in white and red.




The black and white jacket was inspired by the Dandelion jacket in the Bath Museum




Often when we see historical items in museums the colours have faded but in reality the colours would have been much brighter sometimes with the addition of spangles (Jacobean equivalent of sequins) and the use of gold and silver threads.
The Margaret Layton jacket is perhaps one of the most famous embroidered pieces of period clothing you may have seen; it's in the V&A and is unusual as we have the actual jacket and a portrait of Margaret wearing it. Carolyn has a beautiful jacket invoking the V&A one.





Then we get to the coifs. We all loved the ingenuity of these items and the fact they were constructed in such a way that they fit almost anyone because they were gathered with a tie. Carolyn brought various examples all based on originals.



Clearer photos below! Then we were on to ruffs and rebato collars, pockets and knife holders, all beautifully made. 
What a talented lady you are Carolyn, it was such a pleasure to have you speak this morning and share your exquisite work.
Here's Carolyn fully clothed and some close ups of the embroidery - and yes, it's all her own work and all clothes are hand stitched too.





























Sunday 17 September 2023

The Finished Piece

 Well, here it is! The Skipton Castle project is finished and ready for display. We will have it with us at Yarndale and then it will be at the Castle. Come along and have a look next weekend 23rd/24th September. All the squares came together without too much of an argument. All contributors are named on the back and the construction team was Gail, Claire, Carolyn, Sally, Sue and Jill. Well done everyone!

Claire will be giving a talk on Sunday at Yarndale about our big projects - come along around 12.30 I believe.







Monday 17 July 2023

The Great Tapestry of Scotland

 Today we were joined by Susie Finlayson who gave us an absolutely fascinating talk about the Great Tapestry of Scotland. What a wonderful project it is and a couple of members who have actually been to visit it in Galashiels can testify to how brilliant it is. I say tapestry, but as we know it's an embroidery but has been called a tapestry in the tradition of the Bayeux, Stamford and Quaker pieces. 

The idea for the tapestry came from Alexander McCall Smith after he visited the Prestonpans tapestry (there seems to be a lot of embroidery-tapestries about!); he asked Andrew Crummy to design it and Alistair Moffat had the task of deciding which events in Scotland's history to include. The resulting tapestry is a very impressive 140m long x 1m wide and consists of 165 panels - that's four times the size of the Bayeux. The tapestry reflects not just the lives of the rich and famous, the kings and queens, but the ordinary people of Scotland too.

Stitchers from all over Scotland took part in embroidering the panels, all coordinated by Dorie Wilkie who led the stitching on the Prestonpans tapestry. Susie became involved at the beginning of the project and was initially not a stitcher but has become a very accomplished one! The original designs for panels were traced onto linen union fabric and then with minimal instructions or rules sent off to various groups round Scotland to be completed. Stitches and colours were pretty much left to the groups and they all added in their own personal stories and tags resulting in a rich and varied collection of panels. Officially the panels cover from the ice age to 1999 with the reformation of the Scottish Parliament, although extra bits have been incorporated in the Welcome Panel. The Welcome Panel is the first to greet you as you enter the purpose built centre where the tapestry is displayed. Galashiels was chosen as the permanent home for its accessibility while not being Edinburgh or Glasgow. A further panel - the Interchange Panel was commissioned by the Borders Railway Community Partnership and is being worked on at the moment; in fact this is the piece that Susie brought to our meeting and that we had the privilege of stitching parts of. Even Queen Camilla has added stitches to it, so we are in good company! Those of us who added to the panel signed Susie's record book - again including HRH!

We had a really great day with Susie and her anecdotes about the project were wonderful. We just need a trip north of the border to see the whole thing now.



The Interchange Panel











Our contribution in progress!






Tuesday 16 May 2023

Craven Museum visit

Thanks to Dee for her guest post about this month's meeting!

We were welcomed to Craven Museum by staff members Jenny and Megan, who started with a brief tour of the museum, pointing out items of particular interest in relation to textiles – ranging from a costume worn by a mill owner’s daughter and wedding outfits to a piece of cloth dating back 5,000 years.

We were then taken to the Education Room where we were given an interesting Powerpoint presentation about the textile related items stored in the museum and the resources they have access to.  The staff had also laid out several items of clothing from their stores which included a range of fashion through the ages, one of which was a beautiful silk wedding dress from the 1940s, owned by a titled lady, which had later been embellished with paints and beading by a maid.  Other items included shoes, baby clothes and table covers made in beautiful hand-made lace.  We spent some time inspecting the detail of these items before we were taken in small groups to the upstairs store room to see things not currently on display, such as samplers etc.

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit and are grateful to the museum staff for organising this bespoke  visit for us.

The afternoon was spent stitching back at the hall and some of the Skipton Castle squares appeared - sneaky peek below.



And hardanger from Gail's group...