Recreating a 17th Century-style jacket

You may have noticed a new blog in my list of favorites. The Embroiderers' Story is a blog from Plimoth Plantation, documenting the museum's work on a 17th century-style embroidered jacket. It's not a strict recreation, though. They're taking the cut of one jacket in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, with the embroidery of another.

The most exciting part of this project is that they're looking for help from the stitching community. If you can take the time to visit Plymouth, Massachusetts (and can afford to stay locally) during one of their stitching weekends, you can help! The curator says that you don't have to be an expert embroiderer. They're sending out a sample kit to those who would like to volunteer. You stitch the sample and send it back in. They look at what stitches are done well, but also for tension, so they can match tension in adjacent areas. If you're really good in one stitch, they can put you to work just doing that one stitch! For more details, see this post.

Speaking of stitches, that's one of the best things on this blog. The museum is working with Tricia Wilson-Nguyen of Thistle Threads to put together the sample kits and write up instructions for individual stitches and instructions for areas of the jacket. Some of the most recent blog postings are providing links to PDFs of the various stitches used. As a matter of fact, the day after I posted about trellis stitch, this blog provided detailed instructions for it!

So, while I won't be able to stitch on this fantastic project, I'm going to enjoy following its progress. The fantastic stitch instructions are a bonus!

Enjoy!