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The Jacket of Many Stitches

I promised pictures of the jacket being worn, so here they are!

We had some nice weather, and the Jacket smiles in nice weather. The hat is by Felt by Bridget, bought some years ago at the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show.

The necklace came from Harrogate too – a stone pendant, with a cord I made myself in kumihimo. It’s the green and orange one on this page.

And finally, another view of the masks!

Little Jacket Again

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You might recall that this shape gave me some trouble when I was working the Coat of Many Flowers. Somehow, that wasn’t the case this time. It appears twice, and while this one is very different to the other, I think it works.

I like the contrast between the Mountmellick stitch facing inwards on one leaf and outwards on the other, the Bonnet stitch edging over the central red section.

I do wonder whether there should be more of the single twisted chain stitches, but I think I’m happy to leave them as is. You might also note, just behind the copyright notice, a tiny Fishbone Stitch leaf. There are a few blemishes on the fabric – to be expected with a jacket that’s probably at least thirty years old – and I’m covering them with these little leaves. I can add more if I find more snags or blemishes, and they will add a bit more fragmentation and frivolity.

The whole theme of this design (if you can call it a Design, when it “just growed” like Topsy!) seems to be counterchange.

This one shows variegated thread and plain thread against plain felt and variegated felt. I’ve kept greens with greens and pinkish reds with pinkish reds, but the whole idea still lies in the layering of detail.

I’m pleased that I found a place for coral stitch as the stem supporting the brown shape, although the rayon yarn is an absolute monster to use. It tangles if you so much as look at it sharply, and while I would normally use a hoop to hold the fabric, giving me two hands for the thread, I’m reluctant to use a hoop on this fabric, so there was instead much muttering ..

There was much muttering, also, as I took the toggle loops off. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to finish the edges of the jacket, when I get there, but I’m already sure I won’t use the toggles and toggle loops which were already there.

They were attached by multiple overlapping lines of machine stitching, and since I wanted to avoid damage to the edging braid in case that remains the finished edge, I had to be very careful. Two evenings of fiddling and muttering produced this rather sad little heap of redundant loops.

But at least they are now off the jacket!

More progress on the Little Jacket

I decided that I was going to work all the major stems in one of the Braid Stitches, so I spent quite a bit of time revisiting Plaited Braid Stitch, the ordinary Braid Stitch, and others. For a while that was a little painful.

First of all, I was reminded that these stitches don’t stay in your hands the way (say) Feather Stitch does, and then secondly I was reminded that they are very thread-hungry. It’s (almost) all on the front, where you get the benefit of it, but metres get swallowed up in short order. And I knew there would be metres of whatever-stitch-I-chose. My stash doesn’t run to that sort of length, but having performed a few experiments, I realised that sock yarn would be perfectly useable, given the fabric I’m working on.

I finally chose to work Holly Braid Stitch, which I experimented with in 2014 when I was working on the Glittering Nightcap. I’d found it in Jacqui Carey’s book “Elizabethan Stitches”, and after some struggles it had worked pretty well. This time I tied myself in so many knots with it that I asked for help in the Historic Hand Embroidery group on fb, only to find that very few people had attempted it. However, those who did were very helpful, and several very intrigued people asked me could I video it if I got it to work…

So I have. What you see here is probably not enough to learn the stitch from without also following Jacqui’s diagrams and instructions, but I think it helps with the “workflow” of the stitch, which is not well represented in those diagrams, I suspect purely because, as a braidmaker, she thinks differently about the way a stitch works.

Once I had the stitch down pat, I bought a rather gorgeous sock yarn (Woodland Fire from The Yarn Gallery), and whenever I wasn’t sure about the details I wanted to add to a flower or leaf, I just kept on with the stems..

And on. And on!

And now, Episode 72 of Slow TV Stitchery is now live, in which we encounter difficulties in working a pattern backwards, experiment with French Knots, and recall “Leaving the Tyne”.

More elements on The Little Jacket

I’m using a lot of variagated threads, of course, and leaving stranded threads un-separated. Furthermore, since all washability is clearly lost here, I’m picking thread for colour and texture, rathere than paying attention to the fibre or considering colourfastness. I can, after all, replace the stitching with something else if I need to!

Basque Stitch edges the brown petals here, and triple chain stitch forms the spine of the yellow one. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you will see that the green calyx is held around the edge with coral stitch and then a blanket stitch which is highlighted with detached buttonhole in a pearl cotton.

I’m really very pleased with how this element has turned out, although I may choose to lighten the stems on the leaves at the top, once I have everything in place and know what I have to balance of the overall impression.

I’ve looked quickly through the posts for the Coat of Many Flowers, and I was much more definite about stitching all around almost every shape for that, except the small teal leaves. For this one, I seem to be stitching a lot more veins and spines, or edging only one side of a piece. If I become anxious about pieces coming away, I can always add some stitches!

This element was more floral in previous incarnations, but here, I think it has drifted more in the direction of a seedhead. The “seeds” are isolated oyster stitches in sock yarn!

I unified the brown petals by using the same thread to embellish each, but made them more interesting by using different sitches. I’m particularly taken with the feathered zigzag chain on the middle one. The other change, compared with the Coat of Many Flowers, is to have turned some of the edging stitches around: last time, when I used rosette chain stitch, it was more like blanket stitch, with the “vertical” stitches pointing in to the centre of the shape.

And now, Episode 68 of SlowTV Stitchery is live. In which I discuss the alarming adventure of a Watermill Stitchery, remind myself to include the slips when I finally assess the success of Swirl Stitch (not yet, alas), and note that the skill of choosing the order in which to experiment is unheralded and undervalued.

Getting Started on the Little Jacket

The basic technique I’m using for the Little Jacket is the same as I used for the Coat of Many Flowers, so the block colour comes from pieces of felt cut to shape. Most of them are the light and lofty felts I use with my embellisher, but this dark brown is slightly denser and more variable in colour. The variations aren’t as clear in photos as they are in real life, and I have a faint hope that if I wear it enough some of the lighter colours will fade a little more than the dark ones, and pull out the contrast a bit more.

This is the first of the motifs I worked on. A long-legged variation on chain stitch on the central petal is set off by neat paired blanket stitch edgings on the outer petals. I’ve decided that the yellow is to be an accent colour, and I’ve ensured that I have small bits of it it scattered across the whole jacket. In this case I’ve not used contrast colours to stitch it down. I’m not sure about the whipped blanket stitch on the lower half, but I needed something to contrast with the single twisted chain stitches on the uper half, and I don’t think I will continue unhappy with it once the whole jacket is finished.

By contrast, I’m not at all happy with this one, and I don’t know what to do with it.

I like the crested chain edging on the brown petals, and I like the odd combination of rosette chain and blanket stitch in the yellow-green pearl cotton, but not how I’ve placed it or the effect it is creating. The stitch running in a spine down the lower brown petal is called “Wing Stitch” in the book I found it in, and again, I like it, but not what it is doing here.

I can see some unpicking in my future!

However, episode 66 of SlowTV Stitchery is now live, in which we consider the state of progress on Tynemouth Priory and plans for the sea, learn from Granny Weatherwax, and start planning more Watermill Stitcheries.

More Upcycling – a little jacket

This little edge-to-edge woollen jacket was inherited from a great aunt. She was much smaller than me (I’m not tall, but my great aunts were all tiny!) so, among other things, she’d turned up the sleeves to create cuffs, which has resulted in rather unattractive, and potential life-limiting (for the garment) wear patterns. Naturally, I’m not in favour of that. Nor do I especially cherish the look of me in unadorned beige, especially since the arrival of my “corona wings”, which otherwise I rather like. So the jacket is going to be jazzed up.

In fact, it probably won’t know what’s hit it, by the time I’ve finished!

I am returning to the motifs from Grandmama’s tablecloth, which I also used on the Coat of Many Colours and the Jacobean Firescreen, so at least some of what you see over the next few posts will be familiar, but whereas the design for the Coat of Many Colours stretched across the skirt of the coat, the design here trails over the shoulders and down the arms.

And whereas the design for the Coat of Many Flowers was planned in advance, with some care, the design for this one was put together in a series of adventures. First, my mother put the jacket on and I drew trailing stems around and over the jacket. Then I tacked them in with a single strand of Appletons Crewel Wool (then I won’t need to take them out!) and pinned cut out paper patterns of the motifs in their place.

Then the paper cutouts were replaced with felt cut outs. You can see from this picture of the back that I missed out some necessary stems here..

I wonder whether it’s luxuriant enough?

Meanwhile, in other news – Episode 64 of Slow TV Stitchery is now live, in which we discuss Impressionism in stitches and an Announcement is made..

Lotus Flower Coat – starting to plan..

Photograph of a turquoise blue pice of tweed

When we visited last year, my aunt gave me a lovely length of faience blue tweed, and although I could, of course, make a skirt (another skirt!), the idea eventually came to me to make it into a sort of cross between a cardigan and a jacket – something that I can wear with lots of things, that makes a good additional layer in our cold house, but looks cheerful and casually smart.

Painted sketch of a longline jacket with a shawl collar

I thought about the colour, and some variant on the Egyptian Lotus Flower pattern seemed like a good start. Then I thought some more, and decided that the very graphic, formalised versions used in border patterns would want to be used formally and make the garment too formal. The tweed is relatively unfulled, and widely sett, so anything too structured won’t work well.

Something like this, I think. It’s a Simplicity pattern from the Seventies or early Eighties, and it won’t be hard to lengthen. It will be lined (which the pattern doesn’t call for), but there are few pattern pieces and almost no shaping.

A first attempt at a border pattern of lotus flowers and buds.

Naturally, it won’t be going to go undecorated…!

Maybe a border pattern?

Somehow, no. I’ve not done one before – the Coat of Many Flowers has a swathe across the middle, and the Jacket of Many Stitches has the pattern dripping down from the shoulders – but I think it might end up looking a bit obvious, and a bit formal. I’ll still think a bit more about this one, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be this.

Watch this space, as they say…

Taking an idea from the past

Years and years ago, I bought a white cotton shirt and a long cotton petticoat at a vide-grenier in the Gers, where we were visiting a friend who was restoring an old farmhouse about a hundred yards from the route of the “Camino” to Compostela to run as a pilgrim hostel. I don’t wear either of them much, the petticoat being a little long, and the shirt a bit short in the arm, but I do occasionally just look at them to delight in the work that was put into them.

There is machine stitching on them – they’re not as old as all that! – but there is a lot of hand work too.

The careful reinforcement between the ruffle and the edge of the garment is a case in point, with a single length of neat feather stitches providing just the variation in texture it needs to stand out, subtly, but definitely. From a distance, it looks almost like a braid, but instead of being bought and applied, it was something the maker could do by themselves.

The ruffle itself is a super-simple version of broderie anglaise, a single eyelet within a pointed edge, hand-finished.

Well, now…

I don’t always do epic garments like the Jacket of Many Stitches or the Coat of Many Flowers, but sometimes I do decide that a garment needs a little bit of lift.

Expect to see rows of feather stitch popping up on assorted garments for the next several years!

A sign of the times, 2

The style of the embroidery for the masks is just like on the Jacket itself; felt as the basis, enlivened with wool stitchery. In this case, Mountmellick stitch and grouped blanket stitch on the leaves, French knots, cable chain stitch and half chevron stitch on the bud (if that’s what it is!).

Since I worked the butterfuly entirely in isolation, I hadn’t had to think about the stems, but when I stopped to think, before I worked stems on the masks, I realised that there was a decision to make. The Holly Braid Stitch that I used for the main stems on the Jacket seemed just slightly out of scale for the size of masks, but at the same time, ordinary chain stitch didn’t have enough personality.

I gave some more thought to the question, and then thought that it was a perfect use for one of my old favourites, Hungarian Braided Chain. The finer stems are simple stem stitch, and it’s been fascinating to see how the various different stitches have displayed the variegated knitting yarn differently!.

Jacobean trellis stitch is another old favourite, and the crossed blanket stitch over the bright yellow pulls the orange across from one side of the mask to the other.

So I have ended up with three masks to go with the Jacket of Many Stitches, one with a single isolated motif, one with a motif on each side, and one with motifs on each side, linked by a stem. They’re lined with calico, and I’m adding the wires from a couple of defunct single use masks to hold them a little more closely to the nose.

A success, I think!

A sign of the times

It has occurred to me that one of the reminders of the past two years will be in the number of garments that have masks to go with them. I am planning two dresses for myself, and even though I doubt I’ll get to wear them until times are much less alarming, I’m going to make matching masks, just to be prepared!

Having finished the Jacket of Many Stitches, signed it in Morse Code (of course!), and noting that it’s definitely a garment for chillier weather, I thought that some winter-weight masks might be in order. So I took a pattern from one of the bought ones we’ve got, and drew myself some ideas.

I have some cream wool left over from a jacket I lost in Paris when I was working there. I’ve always regretted that jacket, so I’m hoping that using the leftovers for something else will reduce the sting a little. It’s been thirty years, so it’s about time!

It was trickier than I expected to get my motifs small enough to fit on the mask, especially since I decided to use up some of the fragments of leftover felt at the same time, and sometimes I was a bit short of felt.

I started off with a little butterfly, and made him quite simple, enlivened with a thread with a bit of sparkle in it. I think it’s a machine thread, and the sparkle goes from gold to brown and back. I made up that mask, and realised that it was a bit on the small side. It does cover everything it needs to, it’s just that I prefer to feel there’s a bit of extra space in it.

So I tweaked my pattern a little, and drew my idea for the motifs on the fabric. At which point I realised that the pencil wouldn’t rub out, so I running stitched over the lines and turned the fabric over.

Nothing to see here, folks, moving on!