Finished Elizabethan suit

 I need to get pictures rotated and there will hopefully be modeled pictures eventually, but I just wanted to make sure pictures of a complete object exist, since I'm terrible at remembering to do that. I also needed to make sure there was a blog today.

I did do one Eleonora dress activity. Mathew Gnagy (The Modern Maker) published his 16th Century Woolen Stocking Knitting Pattern today.  I have wanted to do the Eleonora stockings ever since IRCC I but I am not an expert knitter and the prospect of doing the 20+ stitches per inch has freaked me out. I've been practicing. I even got as far as swatching on 0000 needles. Swatching and panicking. I'm so unbearably slow at it. I knew I could do a plain pair of stockings with a modern heel in a lower gauge but have been hesitating. I bought the pattern and he included a much simplified version of the Eleonora stocking with a patterned band that looks similar to the top of the band on the burial socks, but not the wide cuff with eyelets. It does have the decorative stitches down the back. It also includes shaping for the bottom of the foot and heel more in line with extant stockings. It has enough of the feel of the stockings to make me happy, but I think they are much more achievable with my current knitting skills in the time allotted. I do need to get different yarn as my silk is much lighter than the sock yarn this is patterned for.

Known World Heraldry and Scribal Symposium is tomorrow, so I won't get really going again on the Eleonora project for another day, but I'm excited to get moving forward with it again.

The problem with making 25 buttons is that you have to make 25 button holes

I love making buttons. I do not, however, enjoy making button holes. I decided to do button loops instead, but that is still a lot of them when I made the deadline quite this tight.

Trim went on reasonably quickly, but it is still takes awhile to sew the stuff on by hand. I did "cheat" and buy it rather than make fingerloop braid as I had originally planned. Part of that was not finding a good metallic thread I could afford. I hope to have maybe figured that out for the Eleonora ribbon/trim. I have two silver threads to try out for that. But I had already bought 3 different Joann's out of this silver trim, so I went with it.

The doublet is wool with the crazy sparkle silver boucle in it and I was worried it would be too shiny after someone remarked "so should we call you Sparkles?" while I was fitting it, but I like it, even with yards and yards of silver trim. Once again, the poor recipient is just going to have to deal. Part of the reason I'm making it for free-- I get to do what I want.

As far as the other things I wanted to test out with this, I am so far pleased. I interfaced it in wool and did some steaming and shaping with the construction and I'm liking the control it gave me. I didn't try all the techniques I had hoped to, but baby steps are good, I guess.

I threw the jerkin on over it and I think I have the sizing done pretty well so they sit nicely. If anything, I could have shaped the side back seams with a bit more curve for a closer fit. Hard to tell without putting them on a real body, but I think they are going to hang pretty well.

The Venetians are basically constructed, I just need to finish the buttons on the fly, attach the hook and eye, hem them and decide if I should trim them or leave them alone. I won;t be getting the shirt done in time for Saturday, which is frustrating after all the time I spent on the embroidery for the cuffs, but after doing all the rest of the work on this by hand and hand embroidering it, I can't bring myself to doing it on the machine.

I may just keep the hat

It is just a cheap felt hat I picked up at Halloween planning to cover it with fabric to make a tall hat, but the grey was a good match for the jerkin so I left it as is. I am a sucker for accessories and needed a break from the doublet trim. I stitched on a couple of cream ostrich plumes, a black one, a white feather pad and a couple of green/black rooster feathers. The side back of the hat is probably its best angle (which this isn't.)  The herald in question already has a hat he likes, so I'm not sure if he'll go for this one or not. If not, I'm keeping it. I have a silver velveteen I plan to make a doublet gown from and I have a set of purple suede hides I'm going to make my own leather jerkin from. I can make another hat for me if he likes this one, but if not, I can certainly integrate it into my wardrobe.

The doublet should be complete tomorrow-- just the trim on one sleeve left and the buttons to stitch on.

Buttons on and the leather jerkin is complete

Museum of London Object #118831

 Buttons in place and a little more decorative punching on the collar and I'm calling this finished.

I had considered doing a bit more paint on the skirting, but I think it looks just fine plain and I admit to being a little worried that if I add more, I'll mess it up. Sanding the paint lightly didn't do much to remove it and I don't want to get aggressive. The overwrought back panel isn't visible at all when worn, so the jerkin will just have to do as is.


I am rather pleased with the buttons and just how easy they were to do. The inspiration jerkin in the Museum of London has a leather thong running the length of the front opening. There are punched holes through which the shanks of the buttons are pushed and the thong is threaded through, holding them taut. It was much quicker to do this than stitching them in place. And the shank of my buttons just so happened to be the exact size as the punch I had been using all along. Although it is doubtful the jerkin will be worn buttoned closed, I still think the tiny line of buttons is lovely and it certainly finishes things off. Now I just need to finish the doublet and pants.

Ironing with a mallet

 This is one of those times I really wish I had a dress dummy so I could show off just how cool this is looking. The hanger in the corner by my fridge just doesn't quite cut it. I still have some fiddling with the collar and buttons, but the jerkin is pretty close to being done.

I worked pretty solid on it all day to finish the rest of the punching. Since this is has a deadline. I did most of the sewing on the machine using felled seams. I just stitched the two pieces together, trimmed one side as close to the stitching and stitched the long side down. As it is leather, no folding under, just stitch and trim close to that second seam. As the blog title suggests, I did pound the seam down a little with a mallet. Although that wasn't all that necessary.

If you compare this to the picture of the pieces from last night, you'll notice that the doublet skirting is quite a bit shorter. I decided it needed a trim once on. So I need to repaint the bottom and possibly put more punches in. I say possibly because my shoulders are saying nope to that idea and my hands are blistered from the punch. Even the spring loaded punch makes causes exhaustion when there are hundreds of punchings.

I still need to do some trim on the under doublet, so Ill let this sit for a day or two while I work on the other and give it some thought. I also probably need to sand the inside back to see if I can get rid of the paint. I was going to line this, but once I got it assembled it jut really was better without. And this way the holes create ventilation. The only reason left to line it is to hide the paint on the inside. Which can't be seen at all when it is worn. Even if left unbuttoned it doesn't show, but I'm still embarrassed by it.  I really hope sanding helps.

I have to laugh

The Museum of London just wrote a blog article on the leather jerkin I'm using as inspiration for the one I posted about yesterday. And there are loads more images available now as well. I only mildly feel like the Universe is telling me what a crummy job I'm doing.
Actually, I'm feeling a bit less worried about how the jerkin is working out. My husband put the doublet on and I put the jerkin pieces on over that. If I cut down significantly on the trim I had planned for the doublet and keep it closer to a plain black wool, the crazy decoration on the jerkin looks nice rather than like it went to the carnival.

I also took the back piece, flipped it to the suede side and re did the branding and painting. No black makes a considerable difference, as does leaving the gold off the collar. I'm much happier with it now. There is one spot on the shoulder where the suede is a bit more textured than I'd prefer, but I think once worn it will even out.

Still lots of punching to do. My shoulders are complaining so I'll get back to it tomorrow.

Jacques le Moyne and La Clef des Champs

Watercolor of Strawberries and Emperor Moth by Le Moyne

I'm taking a break to celebrate my twins' 6th birthday, so not much of anything got done today. I did run across another book to add to my 16th century embroidery book obsession though. Most of the modelbuch don't really have more than a page or two of the animals and plants that we so often find in the extant pieces of embroideries. The animals, plants, and other pictorial scenes seem to come from other sources.  It was actually the other sources that lead me to the modelbuch in the  first place.

I got sucked into my fascination with the origins of 16th century patterns by reading Margaret Swain's The Needlework of Mary Queen of Scots and then Michael Bath's Emblems for a Queen, the Needlework of Mary Queen of Scots. Many of the animals came from natural history illustrations. I got Gessner's Historiae Animalium and spent a great deal of time investigating the various emblem books that are part of the English Emblem Book Project. All of these are used as sources for embroidered pieces.  The book I ran across earlier this week seems to fill in a bit of the hole between these books published for other purposes and the ones published for embroidery. It is Jacques le Moyne's La Clef des Champs (The Key to the Meadow.) Published in 1586 in Blackfriar's in London. It is full of woodcuts of animals, flowers, and fruits, set out specifically for use as a pattern book. That makes it a bit different than Gessner and the emblem books since they were used and not intended for that specific purpose. Le Moyne specifically published his as a pattern book. The dedication to his patron,Lady Mary Sidney, puts forward the book to be of use to artists and craftspeople including goldsmiths, embroiderers, and tapestry makers.

Via

It was certainly used for that. The deer here looks awful familiar. As does one of the monkeys and squirrel. Both the British Museum's copies are both pricked for embroidering. Wingfield Digby discusses Le Moyne in Elizabethan Embroidery on page 41.  I ran across the book because of a mention in "English Domestic Embroidery Patterns of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries" by J.L. Nevinson. The only complete edition is in the Oak Spring Garden Library in Upperville,Virginia but as mentioned, the British Museum has 2 copies and they published a facsimile back in the 1970's.

Via

Le Moyne himself was an interesting person and has become a much more well known and important artist in the 20th Century as some of his watercolors were discovered in the 1960's. He was a French Huguenot. He was the cartographer sent by the Charles IX of France as part of an expedition to Florida in 1564-65. The drawings he made were burned during a Spanish attack of Fort Caroline and he redrew many from memory later. They include some of the first depictions of Florida Natives giving him a place in history for that. It is the beauty and detail of the watercolors that really give him his importance, however. He is one of the earliest and best botanical artists of the Sixteenth century. If you want revel in the delicacy and beauty of some of his watercolor, search Jacques Le Moyne at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The same search at the British Museum will turn up the woodcuts for La Clef des Champs as well as many of the woodcuts of the French expedition in Florida. I certainly enjoyed both.