Early 17thC Embroidered Waistcoats Are Some Of My Favorite Things. Definitely One Of My *someday* Projects.

Early 17thC embroidered waistcoats are some of my favorite things. ❤️ Definitely one of my *someday* projects.

Woman's jacket, English. About 1610–15, with later alterations. Linen plain weave, embroidered with metallic threads and spangles; metallic bobbin lace. The Elizabeth Day McCormick Collection.

if you like crafting and also free things, might i suggest the antique pattern library?

it’s a not for profit that’s gathering books, patterns, and other materials related to crafting that are out of copyright (or getting permission from copyright holders in some cases) in order to share them online. they scan items, clean them up, then make everything available for free!

free things are great, especially when you’re just starting to get into something. like oh, i’m supposed to spend money on this hobby i just picked up 20 minutes ago???

the first time i ended up on the site, i seriously spent hours just trawling through everything. there’s the usual suspects like knitting, crochet, embroidery, but there’s also woodwork, calligraphy, and books on things like how to mount and frame pictures. with cross stitch patterns, they also make modern charts with the dmc colour codes available.

links to their webbed site and instagram:

https://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/

https://www.instagram.com/theantiquepatternlibrary/

behold, a glorious cat cross stitch pattern (link goes to antique pattern library page):

[image id: Multicolour charted cross stitch design of a cat sitting on a red pillow with tassels, holding a green ball]

The embroidery for the 1760s waistcoat is officially finished! This one took me a while to complete, but looking back at my sewing diary I actually only spend a total of 16 days on the embroidery (though that was spread out over several months). As of now, I’ve put in around 150 hours, with more work to come.

The next thing to do is begin on construction. When it’s all finished, the waistcoat will be completely lined and have functional pockets. It will also be my first time making hand-sewn buttonholes, which is a little scary.

Now I need to figure out how to embroidery the coat that will go with this!

Started on a new fall ensemble! This amazing gown is from a Tischbein portrait from 1770! I’m halfway through the petticoat now, and will hopefully be finishing it up in the next few days.

I’m using two shot taffetas for this dress - a blue/green taffeta and a red/yellow taffeta (that looks bright orange!). Things are going a bit slowly because there is a lot of hand-sewing involved. The hem on the petticoat is 2″ deep and all had to be hand-sewn. The edges on the fabric ribbon that will become the box-pleated trim also had to be hemmed by hand, all 360 inches! It was horrible, and now it looks like I’ll have to add another length of fabric on, so that’s another 120 inches to hem! Yeesh. I’m still hoping to wrap the petticoat up by the end of the week, though!

Had a last minute notion to make an Elizabethan-inspired embroidery pattern to celebrate the eclipse. I originally thought of doing a coif pattern, but thought the eclipse would get lost in the folds of the cap, so I ultimately went with a sweet bag. Since it was cloudy throughout totality, I thought it would be fun to incorporate the stars & clouds embroidery from a c.1600 waistcoat at the Bath Fashion Museum. The sun design is inspired by various period illustrations of sun motifs, minus the face they always seemed to put on every sun/moon design because I just couldn't make it not look silly.

I have no idea what stitches I would use for this bag, since sweet bags tend to use all sorts of different stitches. The original stars & clouds design is in blackwork, but I haven't seen any evidence of blackwork used on sweet bags. I'd probably do the background in a black or darkest blue metallic gobelin stitch (also ahistorical, but pretty!), the clouds/stars in silver stem stitch, the corona and rays in satin stitch or plaited braid, and the moon in black detatched buttonhole or some other fill stitch. Or I'd do the entire thing in blackwork except the corona and rays of the sun, which I'd do in gilt, documentation be damned.

1860s summer dress

La Compagnie du Costume