"On Female Education" a new article in Winterthur Portfolio (Vol 59 No 1)

We went out to dinner as a family the other night to celebrate the publication of my article in a major material culture journal.  As my kids said "you are officially a historian, mom".   They were also referring to three articles that are starting to appear in another top journal, Textile History.  I shall let everyone know when these three linked articles are ready to be seen.

All four of these articles are a big deal and they have a story behind them.  It has been a really rough road for the last four years getting them published, and at many points I almost abandoned the process in favor of self-publishing something.  My business has taken a real hit as I haven't been able to devote as much time to embroidery of new projects and classes.  But as I explained to the people close to me who had to hear my complaints, it was very important to see through.  Why?

There aren't many places to publish about textiles in the academic sphere in the first place, and nowhere for embroidery specifically; yet almost everyone who comments on the history of women uses embroidery as part of their subject matter arguments.  Often it from a place without knowledge of embroidery other than that which has been published in the late 19th century and regurgitated over and over in multiple forms.  You know the drill - women learned embroidery instead of how to read and write.  They were learning to mend, getting ready for marriage.  Fancy embroidery was done by rich, aristocratic women.  Some flavor of these three generalities with spins on them abound everywhere without question as if there had been some rigorous historical work a hundred years ago to prove these points.  But there wasn't.  Some of us in a smaller connected community of people who love and study embroidery call it 'the lily-white fingered lady' complex

Over the last decade as my work has become more well known with the large reproduction projects of the Plimoth Jacket and the caskets, I have gotten contacted quite a bit by traditional historians.  Usually it goes like this:  "I found you (or someone mentioned/forwarded your site to me) and want to take your class on the history and making of caskets because I am a historian and am going to write the great final book on these caskets".  Implied in this is that they see me as a resource so they can explain it all to the world, because as a maker, I might not know how to interpret in a historical context.  They have no idea that I trained in experimental materials culture as a scientist when I was at MIT.  Trying not to get upset, I often call the person and talk to them.  Who knows - maybe a beautiful collaboration might take root!  But I am always disappointed as they start "embroidery-splaining" (think mansplaining) to me.  Things like:  they had recently learned that the casket they saw was not the only one!  Did I know that??? They have biblical stories on them (really?  I hadn't noticed) and they are an expert in biblical stories!  It goes on.  

Then I start asking them the historical questions that one should ask.  First one - what socio-economic class of people do you think these were made by?  Automatically comes out the regurgitated lily-white fingered lady discussion.  No questioning of it at all.  Then I ask them if they have read any of the research that has been done in the last thirty years.  That is when the bombshell always drops.

"There isn't any,  I did a search of JSTOR and came up with mostly nothing".  And then they pronounce "This is a ripe area for me to extend my (insert here work on Early Modern Women Writers/Gender Studies/Renaissance Humanism/Biblical Interpretations/etc) theories".  And that is the key, they did what any academic is taught to do - look in the journal database for articles published that have been reviewed by independent and anonymous reviewers.  Because there aren't places to publish devoted to this ubiquitous topic of female history - there isn't anything to read.  

That doesn't mean that there hasn't been groundbreaking historical work and that it isn't being published.  There is and lots of it!!  A short list and not exhaustive:

    - Betty Ring's seminal work on Girlhood Embroidery in the 1990s

    - Anything published by Needleprint (Goodhart Samplers, the Feller Collection, etc)

    - Edwina Ehrman's book on Judith Hayle samplers

    - Carol Humphrey's book on Samplers at the Fitzwilliam

    - Twixt Art and Nature exhibit publication

    - Pam Parmel's book Women's Work: Colonial Samplers of Boston 

    - Every Witney Antiques catalog ever written including the 2023 and 2024 tomes as well as Sampling by Finkel and Daughter

    - Almost now countless books about American samplers by state (Delaware, Ohio, Tennessee, Rhode Island, etc)

But notice - every author is either an amateur historian (Ring and the state sampler books), a curator (Ehrman, Humphrey and Watt/Morrall) or an antique dealer (Rebecca Scott and Amy Finkel).  And that doesn't even count the teachers such as Joanne Harvey and docents such as Lorraine Mootz who are literal fountains of raw and hard won historical information.  Or the amazing documentation efforts led by Lynne Anderson of the Sampler Archive Project and others you have seen me interview on Flosstube.

I started listing these to one of the people who contacted me recently and the historian said "you mean stuff is printed in POPULAR books?!"  Yes.  Embroidery is so looked down upon as women's work that you can't get a regular publisher to publish and so they have to be (1) self-published (2) a museum catalog or (3) a dealer's biographical research on the pieces they are selling in their catalog.  I have now been turned down on publishing a book so many times by publishing houses.

Importantly none of these works is indexed.  Indexing a publication is a process of having the citation put in a recognized, searchable database which makes the publication easier to find (using keywords) and enhances its credibility and visibility.  And to top that off, there are often conferences that go with museum exhibits where those 'amateur' historians speak about the topics, revealing the depth of new research and yet there are no conference proceedings, which often become indexed.  

So without a journal, conference proceedings and all the research being published in non-indexed publications - the lily-white fingered woman hypothesis is perpetuating.  Just this week a major historical institution in the UK put out a video about an embroidery in their possession and that was the first thing out of the presenters mouth.  I couldn't watch past that point.  It has over 200,000 views at this point and is raging around the world in social media.   It depressed me.  

I am not saying that the historians who venture into using embroidery as part of their investigation aren't good or have something insightful or important to say.  Just that they accept what has been written in the past without critically looking at the sources and investigating what else might be out there to inform.  There is a bias and we should all know that as well, the bias is towards what are called textural sources; things that have been written down in texts in previous periods.  So that means that their education in their field puts more emphasis on what a contemporary person wrote than on evidence pulled together from a larger variety of sources.  So if a man in the 17th century wrote that embroidery was a trifle that only air-headed women paid attention to - that becomes the evidence to be used.  So bias creeps in significantly and is limited mainly to those who had a position to be argued and could get printed.  Think about it this way, your car mechanic doesn't write a treatise on fixing a car.  But maybe someone quickly watched them and wrote a few paragraphs on 'how to fix a car' from their perspective not knowing how to do it or ever trying it.  That written material would be given all the weight in historical investigations instead of talking to the mechanic as a source.  How accurate would the person who watched and wrote down a few paragraphs?  This is what has been going on in our embroidery history.  Important information is being missed.  A great deal of it.  It is this 'embodied knowledge', the knowledge gained from actually doing that is being overlooked.  

You can see how important it is to publish in an indexed publication - i.e a journal so we can 'tag' the perspective of someone with embodied knowledge (doing the skill as well as teaching and manufacturing) as well as reference others who have done research in embroidery using multiple sources other than just textural ones (such as biographical, object based, etc).  That way a debate and expanded discourse can start.

Now why is this so hard?  Well, over time as the field of history has developed it has fractured into schools of thought.  In other words, what sources are you using.  There are textural-source historians, biographical historians, material culture (object based) historians, economic historians, legal historians, etc.  Each has essentially said - "Hey, you forgot that there is knowledge there in that set of data".  They then do the hard work of separating using those data sources and building up a way to publish of their own - excluding as a matter of course - the others.  So in practice I am finding economic historians don't talk to material culture historians who don't talk to textural historians.  And they don't always look in those fields for information that can inform their perspective either.  And the journals are tailored to each type.  So I come along and say that you can't understand embroidery history without knowing the economics of manufacturing, the biographical details of the embroiderers, the legal environment that women lived under and data from lawsuits, how the embroidery was worked, and even for the three papers yet to be seen, use science and math too. And yes, what was written about it in text sources.  It doesn't fit into the box that has been constructed!!

Talk about freak out!  My collaborators and guest editors were so patient and helpful.  The reviewers were harsh and shocking.  Basically I was writing that the concepts they had been told all their professional lives were not fact based and were romanticized ideas.  Either 19th century lovers of the objects who wanted to associate them with royalty to save them or they adhere to ideas promoted by feminist authors who wanted access to all the areas men traditionally shut women out of, so they degrade embroidery as a ball and chain that men have put on women.  Or even worse, I used science and math to tease out information.  So the mix of sources, the use of embodied knowledge, and shocking with math made some reviewers just throw in the towel and write WRONG on the first page.  One reviewer wrote on one paper "There is no place in textile history for science".  And left it at that.  Ummm.  That is an entire field of its own called Textile Conservation.  One editor told me, that is how you know what you are writing is really, really good stuff; when it ruffles feathers in a major way with data.  

So every point had to be backed up nine-ways to Sunday as we say.  And since some editors often didn't have first hand knowledge and this was the first time certain 'duh' things were being put in a journal, I would have to explain things in footnotes that would be extremely common knowledge to the average stitcher.  I would get a 'can you provide a text reference to that statement?'  No, would be my answer, no one has ever published that as it is ordinary knowledge and then I would have to explain things in excruciating detail.  No one writes this in a book.  But every stitcher, manufacturer, etc. knows it as truth.  Usually I would get a note back from the editor with a 'Wow - I had no idea'.  Yes, we makers have deep, deep knowledge and it should be taken as seriously as what has been written in the past.

That means that the articles started out as 20-page limits that the journals put on their authors.  One ended as a 59-page tome with 3/4 of the biographical information that started in it on the editing room floor with me kicking and screaming (and looking for a way to make the extremely important biography another publication).  The other article is now three separate papers that range between 35-60 pages each.  

Note that material culture work was a backlash against the biography and textural historians.  They said 'hey - the objects are important - look at them closely".  But now they say - you can't publish biography in our journals.  So there is almost an unwritten rule to keep the objects anonymous; not purposeful but as a result of the history of History.  That really got to me.  I want the maker behind the object to be seen.   She is me and she is you.  Do I want my personhood to be obscured in the future when someone looks at my embroidered casket?  NO.  I have to thank Laura Johnson who guest edited that paper for arguing hard that some of the biography had to stay as well as Gary Albert who gave me extra space.  Lots of it.

On Female Education: Projects of Mastery in Seventeenth-Century English Boarding Schools is on amateur school girl embroidery of the 17th century and is solely authored by me.   The other three papers are an analysis of a late 16th/early 17th century object at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I loved working on them with my co-authors Mary Brooks and Cristina Carr.  These articles are all about professional embroidery, proving what the object is, how the workshop worked, where people sat and how long it took to make.  It is a new rigorous method to examine embroideries and a mathematical model that allows the labor to make something be calculated.  

One aspect that I have been dogged about is how can the wider public read these articles.  This is another barrier which enables social media to propagate romantic ideas over data driven history.  Fortunately my collaborator's institution, Durham University, has agreed to pay the Open Access fee to allow our three papers in Textile History to be digitally read by the public as soon as the final layouts are done with the corrections.  So I will be able to provide links.  But my Winterthur Portfolio article was denied Open Access because I was a company and not an academic institution and didn't have a grant to do the work which required Open Access as part of funding.  So I couldn't pay thousands of dollars so you could read it.  And if I was a professor, after the year of embargo on distributing the pdf of the article, I could put it on my university web page but because I make a living as a company, it can't go on my site.  I often tell museums in Europe that in the US there aren't grants for embroidery research and there aren't university positions for what I do.  So it is chicken and egg.  So yet another reason that all this good research done by 'amateurs' isn't being seen.  You get some done and then it effectively gets buried to only be seen by other academics.  The journal and I have come up with a compromise and if you go here, you can either buy the issue direct from them (it has other needlework articles) or pay more for threads from me and I will gift you a reprint copy of the article by itself.  

I have to thank the embroidery audience and students profusely.  I minored in Materials Science Archeology and Anthropology from a MacArthur Fellow at MIT; essentially the history of materials culture using scientific tools.  When I started my embroidery teaching, that was always in the back of my mind.  That maybe someday this would all come together and I could use that methodology to learn new things.  It has and you have been a critical part of it.  I watch and listen to you, see how teaching is absorbed and try new methods, manufacture and think about the economics and history of what you buy.  Many of you have participated as citizen scientists to work on the Plimoth Jacket and take data or stitch experiments for me.  It all has funneled indirectly or directly into these publications.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  

Essentially, professional and amateur work are the targets here.  Hopefully in total they will add to the discussion in a way that will bring embodied knowledge on equal footing with other sources so we can banish the lily-white fingered lady romantic idea to the past and focus on actual data about school girls, teachers, women amateurs, male and female professionals, workshop owners, manufacturers of threads, the business of embroidery and the many, many unseen people behind the amazing objects we love and cherish.   

You don't learn to embroider to mend.  You don't sit there embroidering, eating bonbons in your castle with your hair let down waiting for a man to discover you.  You love the feel of thread, the excitement of progress after an exhausting day of working or caring for family.  You are an artist who creates out of your imagination.  You are a doctor practicing your fine motor skills.  You stitch communally to connect to others.  You embroider to make a living teaching others.  You make gifts or commissions.  There are so many rich and varied reasons embroidery is done.  You, the embroiderer, are a multi-dimensional fully fleshed out person.  We need to reflect that in our history as well.

New Website - Gallery Features

If you haven't been to the shop website lately, you might not know some of the unique features that have been part of the new look.  

First, there are direct links at the bottom of the home page to the latest three Flosstube episodes on YouTube.  I know many of you have begun to enjoy being in my backpack when I visit sampler and embroidery exhibits or interview many in the embroidery world.  This is something I do quite often as I am traveling with my own research and I am happy to find ways to bring this to you.  Of late, I keep hearing from those who learned about an exhibit in time to go any enjoy themselves and that is fantastic and what I want to happen!

Another feature is the color card for the Historic Color Colleciton I developed for all my stumpwork and casket courses (Cabinet of Curiosities).  This cross references the names of the colors that belong to the same dye color.  So if you are looking for a coordinating couching color for something - you can find it right there.

And if you are part of a guild and are looking for new lectures, my list of lectures is all in one place now with an abstract so you know what the content is.  Forward it to your program planner.

The best part of the site is the Gallery!  There are six pages of galleries of my student's projects.  Since the Cabinet of Curiosities is mainly a original design project, it is so fun to see how each student has designed and worked their own unique pieces.  

Spend a few minutes exploring!

Tricia

12 Days of Christmas - Day 12 - CHRISTMAS

 

Merry Christmas!  

The giveaway on this day is an amazing calendar from the V&A showing fabulous composite x-ray images of fashion from their collection.  This shows some incredible images of metal thread embroidery.  

if you are interested in taking a look inside period garments - send me an email at tricia@alum.mit.edu

I have more than one of these to give away

In the message:

• Put XRAY in the subject line
• Give me your mailing address in the body of the message 

Send the message by midnight EST on December 27th to be entered.

While you are waiting to see if you have won - check out my new online course starting on January 1st:  Martha's Silk Satin Pincushion.  

Martha Edlin used a waste canvas technique to embroider counted techniques on glorious silk satin, using it on a pincushion and both her embroidered casket and mirror frame.  Learn to do this yourself while making your own pincushion with motifs similar in look to Martha's piece.  Backed with a piece of exquisite coral pink silk velvet, the 3"x5"cushion will become a beloved piece in your collection.  Worked in soie paris threads from Au Ver a Soie in the Historic Color Collection.  

Find out about Martha's Silk Satin Pincushion Online Course

12 Days of Christmas Giveaway - Day 11

 

The giveaway for day 11 is a set of threads that are more fall colored from The Gentle Arts.  If you are interested in these hand dyed cotton threads, email me at tricia@alum.mit.edu.

In the email message:

• Put FALL THREADS in the subject line
• Put your mailing address in the body of the message

Get the message to me by midnight EST on December 26th to be entered.

12 Days of Christmas Giveaway - Day 10

 

The giveaway for Day 10 is the small book on the samplers from the collection of Alexandra Peters which have been exhibited at the Litchfield Historical Society.  It is a lovely book which contains the research that Alexandra did on her wonderful pieces - many of which have quite astounding stories.

If you are interested in the giveaway - send me an email at tricia@alum.mit.edu.  In the email:

• Put Alexandra in the subject message
• In the body of the message, put your mailing address.

Get the message to me by midnight EST on December 25th.  

If you have loved whitework samplers, my 17th century Whitework Samplers course is starting again on February 1st.  This is a course that mixes learning techniques, making two sampler projects and a lace border, as well as teaching you how to design samplers of this type on your own.  Interspersed is some history and lots about the pattern books of the period where many of the patterns were found.  It is the type of class that you can use to do the projects but come back to time and time again as a reference for other projects you may be doing or to design your own.  Become a master of whitework! 

Read more about the 17th century Whitework Sampler Course

12-Days of Christmas - Day 9

 

Day 9 is a group of winter themed issues of Just Cross Stitch magazine including the 2024 Special Holiday Issue wth all the Christmas Ornaments.  

If you want these issues, send me an email at tricia@alum.mit.edu.  In the email:

• Put JCS in the subject line so I can sort through the entries
• In the body of the message, I need your mailing address so I can ship it to you without chasing your down to give it to me.  Please don't put it in the comments.  My giveaways don't work that way.

Send the message by midnight EST on December 24th to be entered.

12-Days of Christmas - Day 8

 

On Day 8 we have a set of postcards with beautiful 17th-18th century embroidery on them.  

If you are interested in them - send me an email at tricia@alum.mit.edu

In the email:

• Casket in the subject line 
• Mailing address in the body of the email

Send the email before midnight EST of December 23rd to get entered into the random draw.

Do you look at caskets like this and think of how 'someday' you want to make something like this?  Don't let that thought of someday keep you from making it today.  There are only 22 spots available in my Harmony with Nature course, which has a similar look to the top of this casket.  I had threads manufacturers as well as the other materials for finishing and the boxes.  Several of the artisans I worked with have retired and so I am working down the materials and boxes that I had put together.  Don't miss out.  I have waiting lists of people who are sad that they missed out on the larger boxes when they had the chance after taking the original classes.  

The Harmony Casket was designed by me to be something that could be worked like I had designed it OR

have areas that you could redesign easily without having to know how to 'design'.  Each side has a small oval with an animal in it.  These designs can be switched out for something you prefer like pets, pictures of flowers you love, text that is cross stitched in place, a tent stitched design, your house, family, etc.  The possibilities are endless.  The same with the top image in the circle.  I worked the allegory Harmony on mine but also gave a second design for a woman embroidering.  And many students have changed this design to be themselves playing a musical instrument, doing a stitching piece that they had on silk gauze, and other cool ideas.  An appliqué of something else could be done in the circle.  So you can make it your own.  Another student switched the heads of the large flowers to be those indigenous to their country for a twist.  I LOVE, LOVE these types of changes and adore when students in the class go back and forth with me on their ideas for changes.  

Take a look at the description for the Harmony Casket - the next running is January 1st, 2025 and is work at your own pace.

12-Days of Christmas - Day 7

 

On the 7th day of Christmas the giveaway is another yummy batch of threads from The Gentle Art.  Most of the colors are from the Simply Shaker line of the threads.

If you are interested in this group of threads - send me an email at tricia@alum.mit.edu

• In the subject put SIMPLY SHAKER
• Put your mailing address in the body of the message.

Send the email by midnight EST of December 22nd to enter.

If you are looking for an interesting class for the new year, think about making flowers from small silk braids.  It is one of the most bang-for-your-buck type classes that I offer.  The lacet braids are folded and whip stitched together to make petals and leaves and then joined to make flowers.  So many cool little flowers can be made.  

These were done as small projects in the 17th century with braids that were made by the girls themselves but you don't have to make the braid as I have already had them done.  So you can make a beautiful pansy or rose in an evening.  I hope at some point someone sends me a picture of a headband for a veil in cream flowers!  There are so many uses for them.  

Read more and see more pictures of the Silk Lacet Flower Bouquets

12-Days of Christmas - Day 6

 

The sixth day of Christmas has a few fall themed Just Cross Stitch magazines to add to your collection, including the much loved Halloween Issue with all the spooky themed items. 

If you are interested in this giveaway - send me an email at tricia@alum.mit.edu

In the email:

• Put Halloween in the subject line
• In the body of the message give me your mailing address

Send it before midnight EST on December 21st 

12-Days of Christmas - Day 5

The fifth day of Christmas giveaway is a group of hand dyed silk threads by Gloriana in deep jewel tones.  Use these for sampler designs or other stitching.  They come in a few weights of silk.  

If you are interested in this giveaway - send me an email at tricia@alum.mit.edu.  In the email:

• Put Gloriana in the subject
• Add your mailing address in the body of the message.  

Send the email before midnight EST on December 20th to be entered.

Do you like threads?  Always need a stash for when the inspiration strikes?  Or are you interested in what is new in silk and metal threads?  Maybe my Frostings Box series is the thing for you.  I still have a few dozen of the 2024 Frostings Box left.  

What is a Frostings Box?  It is a nice box with a set of around 30 (it varies yearly) new threads that haven't hit the market yet.  It might be something that a manufacturer showed me that will be new to the market or something we have talked about making and finally my batch is here.  I have a wish list of threads that I have been adding to for a decade - it could be a color that doesn't exist currently in the Au Ver a Soie line, a type of silk purl you haven't seen before, or something totally fun and interesting for stumpwork or finishing ornaments.  To get anything made, you need to buy the entire batch from the manufacturer.  So the Frostings Box has been a great way to have the community support the making of new threads.  You get first access to the threads which often run out quickly and I can sell enough to make about 20-30 new threads a year.  If you love stumpwork or textural embroidery - the Frostings Box is for you!

Buy one of the last Frostings Boxes of 2024.

12-Days of Christmas Giveaway - Day 4

 

Today's giveaway is a set of postcards of 17th century gloves from the Fashion Museum in Bath.  

If you are interested in the set, enter by sending an email with the following:

• Gloves in the subject line (so I can sort entries)
• Your mailing address in the email body (I want to ship without tracking you down)
• email to tricia@alum.mit.edu

Send the email by midnight EST on December 19th to be entered for the draw.

Do you like embroidered gloves?  I sure do but there isn't as much call to wear them in public these days!  So I have designed some small projects that give me the yum without needing to wear them.  

One of the projects is a single glove for my scissors.  This one, the Rose Glove, was originally part of the Cabinet of Curiosities course.  If you didn't take that course but like the project, I will be doing a Rose Glove course this winter.  It is a quick project, tent stitch for the design and then learning to do the background with gold thread in a counted stitch.  The piece is finished with step by step instructions to make the cuff up and connect it to an ultra suede glove.  

If you want to be let know when the class opens registration (I am waiting for the gold thread to insert in the kits), put your name on the mailing list:  

Put me on the mailing list for Rose Glove Course Registration Information

12-Days of Christmas - Day 3

Today's giveaway is a wonderful book about Sarah Pierce's Litchfield Female Academy of the late 18th and early 19th century.  

If you are interested in the book, send me an email at tricia@alum.mit.edu

In the email:

• Put Sarah Pierce in the subject (so I can sort my entries)
• Add your mailing address in the body of the email
• Yes - I do choose international winners as well, because I choose randomly from the entries.  

Send the email before midnight EST on December 18th to enter.  Hope you win!

Does your guild do zoom lectures?  I often lecture for groups and have many lectures already ready for new groups.  Topics include:

• Nuremberg Samplers and the Pattern Books Designers
• The Making of The Plimoth Jacket
• Patterns and Pieces: Whitework Samplers of the 17th century 
• The Samplers of the Newbury/Port Massachusetts Area
• Materials for Historically Inspired Needlework
• Listening to the Maker - Lessons from The Plimoth Jacket
• Martha Edlin "Of the Middling Sort"
• Scandal and Imprisonment: Gold Spinners of 17th Century England

Have your program coordinator for your guild contact me for rates and availability

12-Days of Christmas - Day 2

 

Today's giveaway is a package of sampler postcards.  If you are interested in this set, send an email to tricia@alum.mit.edu with Sampler Postcards in the subject line.  Add your name and mailing address to the body of the message.  Send it by midnight EST on December 17th to be entered in the drawing.  

Are you interested in samplers? Have you wanted to design or modify your own historic-looking samplers?  Perhaps you want to make a family genealogy sampler in a particular style?  Have an over the top 17th century band sampler in your head?  Maybe you love the monochromatic Quaker, Vierlande or French samplers and want to design your own.  Have a needle book idea you wanted to design?  My Historic Sampler Design Course is the thing to help you do this.  This 4-month online course will teach the fundamentals of how to design using source material. 

The course includes:

• Lectures in both pdf and video formats covering the theory of design, how to choose motifs, layout samplers, identify common design mistakes, balance motifs by color and weight.  
• How to choose a theme for your sampler and use constraints when designing to help you make decisions
  and avoid decision paralysis
• A method to use cut and pasting of motifs on base graph paper to design if using a computer isn't your forte. 
• Over 100 pdf pages of motifs from historic samplers of the following genres and organized into themes: American, English (1600-1900), Quaker, French, Scottish, German, Dutch, and a smattering of Spanish/Mexican and Scandinavian motifs.  The majority of motifs are from samplers in private collection and were selected to be representative and of enough variety to allow for design creativity.
• The electronic files in both .chart and .oxs format for all the motifs with video based directions on how to import them into MacStitch (Mac), WinStitch (Windows) or MobiStitch (iPad) software by Ursa Software so you can build new samplers using them.  These software platforms can be purchased separately directly from Ursa Software if desired (<$50)

If you want to learn to use the basics of graphing software, there are videos in the course showing how to do basic functions using the included motif files from the course

• Examples from my own design work will be used to show how the designs were arrived at from themes, constraints, color work, mistakes, etc.  
• Use of several Pinterest boards which give extensive examples showing (1) layouts types using historic samplers (2) samplers from the same teacher with ones that weren't designed well and those that improved upon them fixing problems (3) examples of good and bad use of whitespace, weighting and color balance
• A series of design challenges, starting small with monochromatic small samplers and building to a non-rectangular shape/3-dimensional shapes to practice each of the principals separately.  These can be uploaded to the NING student site for discussion with the teacher/students to help get over problem areas if desired.
• How to layout the sampler to fit into spaces and produce the graph to fit after being stitched.  One of the design challenges will be to produce a mini-sampler for an unusual shape.
• How to choose and balance color for your sampler
• Choosing stitches.  The motifs are primarily cross stitch to simplify computer charting but we will go over how to recognize which alphabets/motifs can be changed to satin stitch, eyelet, four sided stitch, etc and how to balance the visual weight change as well as fill 17th century bands with unusual stitches.  Stitches will not be taught but appropriate reference material will be cited.
  

The course is starting again on February 1st, 2025 and registrations are taken now.  

We use cut and paste to first organize and work out designs.  Here are three examples of taking an idea and making it more complicated on the way to the final sampler design

12-Days of Christmas Giveaway - Day 1

My Christmas Holiday giveaways are back!  

Today's giveaway is a set of The Gentle Arts hand dyed threads in four colors.  

If you are interested in this giveaway, send me an email at tricia@alum.mit.edu

Put Gentle Arts in the subject of the email so I can sort mail and put your name and mailing address in the body of the message so I can just quickly ship you the gift!  

Send the message by midnight EST on December 16th to enter this day's raffle.  The winners are chosen by random of the messages received.

And if you are thinking about any last minute holiday stitching - think about the Christmas Garland ornament for 2024 or Christmas Baubles ornament for 2023.  Each of them is a really quick stitch and they are decorated with speciality gold spangles or trim that you and your friends haven't ever seen before.  Made for Eastern European folk embroidery, it has been fun to find new uses for them.  I have heard from some stitchers who have made as many as six of each already for gifts!  

A kit with full tubes of silk is available in the store for each.  The patterns are available for free download.

Christmas Garland download

Christmas Baubles download

Take Care of Your Hands

Some people who I have taught in person know that I had an extreme hand injury back in 2002 where I lost all feeling in my right arm due to an engineering project I was working on at work.  It changed my career and by 2005 I was out on my own after two years of doing no embroidery or even picking up my kid, surgery and rehabilitation (my right index finger didn't move anymore after the surgery).  Yes, that finger is pretty much everything you need to embroider.

So I have owned my own companies to allow me to duck in and out and take breaks during the day/week to manage my right hand for over 20 years.  I was doing a really good job of it, sure at times things got sore but I would do something else for a day or two and then things would calm down.  But this summer, in May, everything went awry in a 'tragic LEGO accident'.   If you think I stepped on one and fell, you would be wrong.  Nope, some changes in the way silk threads are now spooled had me needing to keep some 10,000 spools on hand to deal with class packing and orders.  Totally different than the order on demand system we used to have.  And I had nowhere to put them and especially not in a way where I could access the spools to fill orders.

So I told my boys that the robot stuff had to go and the closets (yes, three closets) of their precious LEGO models had to go.  Did they want to sell them or take them apart for their own kids?  The latter was the answer and we got to work over several weeks.  Well, as the therapist says - you have been teetering all the time on the edge of repetitive stress injuries again and that pushed me over the edge.  

So you might wonder what happened to some projects I was talking about launching, caskets to stitch, things you may have seen on YouTube just waiting for finishing.  It was an all stop as my arms fell asleep at night and I lost the ability to write my name.  At least this time, I had all the professionals in place and I started about 4-6 hrs a day doing all the things they told me.  Down to about 1.5-2 hours a day now (phew!).  My functionality has come back so that I can be proactive on my business instead of just treading water.  I look forward to stitching a little in the new year as it is looking like that might be feasible.  I have gone from not being able to lock the door by turning a key to being able to pack heavy books and take them to the post office.  It was both hands this time and that really sucked.  Still some trigger thumb and wrist pain that comes in and out but the functionality is noticeably better every week. 

I was talking with my main therapist this week and said I was thinking of telling other stitchers some of the things we have found.  She encouraged me to do it.  I have been her 'best patient ever' she says because  I not only do what she says but find all kinds of wacky ways to do more and take therapies with me on travel.  I am always bringing the latest gadget in with me to show her.  

The big things are stretching your hands and forearms (plenty on youtube of that), heat and cold on the muscles, and massage or percussion of the muscles.  Once I 'get back' to normal, these things will be done with less frequency to keep my hands and arms loose and working.  So some of the things to consider for yourself are:

Ways to heat your muscles on your hands:

Use a Paraffin Bath.  I was very skeptical about this and yet it was the most impactful therapy as the hot wax sticks to injured muscles and imparts a deep and long heating.  Use a personal one that is deep and wide so you can eventually get your forearm/elbow in it.  Make sure it has an auto temperature cycle to melt and bring down to 131 degrees and hold there.  After dipping your hands about 10 times, wrap in saran wrap or use the largest bags you can find (the finger gloves are useless and hard to use) to put your hands and arm in.  Use an old oven mitt over this to retain the heat and sit and watch Flosstube for a half hour or more.  A week of this and what I can do is noticeably different.  

Travel with Paraffin Gloves.  I have had to travel a great deal this fall and needed something and was dreading not having the paraffin bath to take the pain away as well as keep the progress moving forward.  Well there are plastic gloves that exist with paraffin inside a layer against the skin with scrim keeping it in place.  So I got a dozen of them and could use them four times each before I needed to throw them away.  A good way to try the concept as well.  I found the European microwaves were hard to use them with but would boil water in a pan at an airbnb and dip the glove in it (open end outside the pan with a clip on it).  

Use a small rectangular heating pad.  While I watched TV or traveled, I would bring a 18-24" long and 12" wide heating pad.  I could wrap it around my arm muscles and hand like a burrito and it would get really nice and warm.  Once your hands get really tight, the arms need warming to work better so all the stress isn't in the fingers or wrist.  

In a pinch if I was in a hotel with no microwave or stove - I would fill the sink with hot water and put my hands or hands and forearms in.  

Keeping your muscles cold

Ice water baths in a sink are enormous.  The contrast of hot and cold is a tried and true means of healing muscles.  If you have just been stitching a bunch, do a cold bath for your hands to remove the inflammation from the muscles.  A cup of ice in a sink with water or even a large bowl in the sink.  Get the wrists in at least and hopefully the forearms.  When I am not able to do this, you could buy a cold can of soda and hold it in your hands and roll it on your wrists.  I have used this trick for 20 years now.  

Get an Ice Ball.  I can't always stand in front of a sink to cool the muscles so other things are needed to cool the hand down.  She recommended an ice ball and for months it was my favorite go to item as it will stay therapy cold for many HOURS outside the freezer.  There is a gel inside the metal ball and one side is insulated, so you roll it and the backside is cold and rolls over your hand/muscles.  The size is such that you can rest your palm on it.  

Get some Ice Gloves.  As I have been able to start doing more, I imagined being mobile while cooling my hands and wondered if there were any gloves where I could navigate the computer mouse while wearing them.  YES!  The gel in them doesn't get hard and so I can do a little work or carry things around and open doors, etc.  Apparently you can also microwave them to have heated gloves which my therapist is quite excited about trying.  

Massage the Muscles

My neuromuscular specialist says our fingers are like little hamstrings and they get tight all the time.  So one way to loosen them up after working a bit is to use one of the sports percussion devices.  But the normal ones are a bit strong for hands and aren't portable.  Theragun makes a small travel one called the Theragun mini and all of us love it.  I keep having to give mine to overseas friends and get a new one.  It fits in the hand well and it is not as strong and so works great on arm and hand muscles.  I keep mine now next to where I sit (when my husband hasn't stolen it!!) and can use it after working on the computer for a bit.  I expect to use it a great deal after I start embroidering again.  

It fits into my on-board luggage and so I can take it with us.  Since we were hiking all year up until my hand accident, I had been bringing it around on trips for sore and tight leg muscles.  

Use KT tape for support.  Many people use arthritis gloves when stitching but there is another option that is both supportive and therapeutic as well and is used by athletic trainers.  My goal is never to get through the pain to do what I want, but to get back to normal.  So I have found the KT tape really useful.   There are plenty of YouTube videos by trainers on how to apply the tape to the different parts of the body/hands to support things like thumb pain or sprains, wrist or palm injuries.  I am down to

just a strip on the side of my hand from just below the knuckle of the thumb to the broad part of the wrist in a diagonal with a half strip.  That takes the place of any sort of wrist strap or glove and so I love it so much more because it gives a shocking amount of support AND the stretching of the skin from the muscle with the adhesive to the knit strip brings blood to the muscle group and helps healing.  So it's like lots of micro-massage.  You can get flesh colored ones so they aren't as noticeable (but today I am wearing slimming black - ha ha).  Get the 'gentle' version which has a less aggressive adhesive as no matter what, it will peel back with washing of hands, cooking and showering so you won't be able to keep it on for days like athletes do for other parts like shoulders.  The gentle type will come off easy and not irritate your skin as much.  

Keep your hands limber and healthy!  I am looking forward to the next month or two when I can pick up a needle again for a little bit.  While I can technically do it again, I want to be pain free when doing so.  But doing all of this has made me get better much faster than the prognosis.  Last time it was over three years, I am at the beginning of month eight and can work much of a day now which is huge.  I'll be keeping many of these routines in place going forward and won't be taking apart LEGOs either!!

Witney Catalogs 2022-2024

Witney Antiques in the UK has had a three year exhibition series on 17th century schoolgirl embroidery and other decorative arts worked by schoolgirls which just closed.  As part of this extravaganza, Rebecca published three catalogs which were interlinked documenting the pieces which were on sale or loan from private collectors.  

It is rare to see many caskets and stumpwork in one place, not to mention the 'toys' or smalls that might have been made by the girls and housed in the pieces.  Rebecca had been saving items for years in order to do these exhibitions as well as books.  Usually the annual exhibit is accompanyed by a well photographed softbound catalog with researched commentary about each piece to help buyers who can't make it to the exhibit make decisions.  This catalog has become a highly desired book for lovers of embroidery since there are so few publications in the embroidery field.    

These latest three books are an exceptional exception to the typical Witney catalog.  First, they are over 2-3 times the size of the usual books and they include additional essays about new research in schoolgirl embroidery.  Volume 1 (2022) is a softbound book which documents dozens and dozens of English band samplers.  The second volume (2023) is a hardcover book which documents the Elizabeth Hall collection and family members embroidery.  Elizabeth Hall attended the Shackelwell school near Hackney, a quaker boarding school for girls.  Her wrapped card casket is in pristine condition and it contained a wealth of embroidered items and samplers from later quaker family members.  The family had a trove of letters which allowed Rebecca to learn much about this family, published in the book.  It is rare for a new casket and additional embroideries to come on the market, much less with bibliographic information and associated with an actual school.  

The third book (2024) highlights the first known decoupaged casket as well as a mind-blowing number of newly seen whitework samplers, caskets, stumpwork mirrors, etc.  

Thistle Threads has all three of these books at the moment for sale in the shop.  The 2022 catalog on samplers is in low supply.  If you are interested in spending Christmas in an embroidery-stupor, put these books on your Christmas list!  

Judith Coolidge Carpenter Herdeg – The Grandmother of Cabinet of Curiosities (1939 – 2024)

I met Judy Herdeg at the instigation of Linda Eaton, former curator of Winterthur Museum and a personal mentor and meeting her changed my life and for many of you – she did too but you don’t know it.  Judy passed away on March 26, 2024 after a long illness.  She was the type of person who was so extremely generous that you would want to know of her but also the type who never thought she had done much of anything as her generosity came from a deep place and needed no limelight.  It is not an understatement to say that there would be no Cabinet of Curiosities without Judy.  She was truly the grandmother of what has been seen as the new renaissance of the practice of 17^th century embroidery. 

Judy’s interest in embroidery started as a young mother in 1970 when she happened upon an issue of the Connoisseur in a dentist’s office.  Inside was an advertisement for an embroidered casket from a dealer.   I think many of us remember when we first saw one of these delights and we came under their spell.  There is something about a box with almost a dozen small compartments of different sizes, bottles and inkwells that is encrusted with embroidered stories on the surfaces of strong women that just grips our imagination.  Judy was similarly entranced in that moment and had to write to the dealer who, fortunate for us, responded with large, bright prints of the box sides and insides.  She wanted it but for the price; it was too high for her life at that time and so she resolutely decided in that moment that she would have one – but that she would make it.  This was the origin story of a great embroiderer and friend to a large network of people engaged in the study and resurrection of the craft. 

 

Judy spent almost 30 years collecting photographs, going to museums, and becoming knowledgeable about 17^th century embroidery.  This came naturally to her – become an expert and then remake it from a place of knowledge.  She and her husband John (and great supporter of her passions in the decorative arts) had spent a decade (1963-1972) moving and restoring a mid-eighteenth-century house, the William Peters House, and a lifetime filling it with English and American treasures of the period.  To walk into the home later in their life was to be in a living, breathing museum of the past.  It was magical and when John would insist on candlelight at night – pure delight for those of us who want a time machine for a moment to see needlework in a period setting. 

 

She borrowed the embroidered cabinet of a friend and had a fine cabinet maker study it and make a replica wooden case.  Along the way, she learned embroidery and completed many projects like bell pulls, chair covers, a fire screen and more; determined to build up her skills for her masterpiece casket.  This took her to small classes at the Royal School of Needlework and after she left a demanding position, a summer camp for embroiderers in New Hampshire for several years.  Always preparing and thinking.  She had decided that she would represent her entire family on the box in a 17^th century style with the house, now called Shangri-la, on the top and started on the small panels of the box.  By 2000, with raising children behind her, she had started to collect needlework to fill the house and provide pieces for her to research.  Because her interest was in the how they were made, she didn’t discriminate and would often pull out a ‘poor relic’ to show another interested researcher.  One such piece she had framed on the wall of a bedroom was an early 1800’s genealogical record sampler from Newburyport, Massachusetts; at the moment the only piece of its type of an important set of samplers but badly in tatters.  She would love to tell the story of opening the nearby blanket chest at an antiques show and pulling out ‘the rag’.  Immediately her sharp mind knew what it was and she stuffed it back in and quickly paid the dealer for the box so she could get the treasure she saw inside.  These pieces proved as valuable to those of us researching as those displayed in fabulous condition.  

 

This is about the time we met in the early 2000s.  Judy was looking for more instruction in the technical areas of embroidery and I was in the middle of the Plimoth Jacket project, an effort at Plimoth Plantation to reproduce faithfully a 1620s embroidered English waistcoat.  Judy immediately became a friend of the project, donating to the cause as well as coming to Plimoth to embroider on the piece and immediately bonding with the other stitchers.  She became one of the small number of embroiderers who produced the now museum piece.  This project formed a community of embroiderers who had often been studying and stitching, but without the fellowship of others who really enjoyed the details of the 17^th century.  Judy blossomed in her love for embroidery with this new set of friends.  Previously she had been heavily involved in communities such as the Colonial Dames, garden societies, and many other museum and decorative arts organizations; but clearly it was this group of lovers of embroidery that just really touched a place which had previously been a lonely passion and not widely shared.  Many embroiderers of niche historical interests can relate to the experience of finally finding your people and being able to discuss details, share projects and materials, and enthusiastically express their interest over some dusty looking relic of the past.  John once confided in me how much this community of stitchers meant to her. 

 

If you knew Judy, she knew what you needed.  Many of us could expect a phone call from some dealer’s booth at a show with the exhortation that she had just found a missing piece that you ‘needed’.  I always found that the photograph that accompanied the call was the proof that Judy did in fact know what I needed and they hang all over my home and are some of the crucial pieces which answered questions I was researching.  She liked to downplay her knowledge built up over decades of study and could be heard to say ‘well I always thought…’.  That was a key phrase to stop what you were thinking and saying and consider another possible avenue of explanation.  A product of her generation, she would be so gracious in pointing out some information that another might not be familiar with and should be.  She taught me that you needed to totally embrace the full history of the period and other areas of the decorative arts to even begin to know needlework.  

 

Judy and her husband John were great supporters of Winterthur and Judy specifically of the needlework area.  Their close friend Linda Eaton hosted THE symposium for needlework for about twenty years and Judy always hosted a full house party at Shangri-La for the teachers and researchers as well as other needlework illuminati who attended.  This was the party of the year to be at in the needlework world, one where dealers and famous collectors sat next to makers and historians; making connections that forwarded the field in leaps and bounds. Often Judy would take the cases off the caskets and plop one into your hands to take it to a table where a half dozen experts could examine it with magnifiers and pretty much write a paper amongst the diversity of expertise peering at it together.  Out would come the relics and pieces not yet framed to spread out and be visually dissected.  Nothing was too precious as it could unlock knowledge.  She and John hosted countless events for guilds, museums, and independent embroiderers in their home and collection.  Their sharing of their collection to the up-and-coming academics and conservators is legend.  Judy donated many of her pieces to Winterthur for the joint program with University of Delaware, training the next generation of textile conservators and curators.

 

In the early years of our friendship, Judy joined with me to visit museums and auctions to examine caskets and allowed me to measure and study her caskets as I was intent on launching a course to bring casket making back to life following the success of the Plimoth Jacket.   This was a joint interest as many aspects of her own reproduction were stymieing her progress as she wasn’t sure where to source many of the parts she needed to finish her box, once the embroidery was complete.  And in fact, it wasn’t obvious how they even attached the embroidery.  It was this joint interest that drove our study together and how valuable her love of relics was.  My engineering background combined with our joint study of her pieces answered so many questions and enabled the measurements and testing needed to allow the papers, the silver stamps, and the tapes to be made as well as the gluing method to be determined.  Judy allowed the hardware to be removed from one of her relics so they could be used to make the molds for all our hardware for cabinets and tens of thousands of brass moldings were made from them.  And one weekend, she allowed me to fly an almost 400-year old bottle of hers with its pewter cap pieces to Boston to go through extensive scientific scans using lasers.  This enabled us to make CAD files and 3D replicas which were used in making the caps and molds for hand blown bottles.  She understood that every casket needed its jewelry and wanted to make that happen.  These were all aspects of the project that could not be done through museum study.  

 

We spoke recently before she passed about how much fun it had been, we spent about a decade giggling over pieces of embroidery together and trying ideas out.  One day we ran over to her daughter’s peacocks next door and stole feathers to replicate their use in stumpwork bugs and see if that was the source of the feather material used in the past (result… don’t think so).  We would share pictures from our last separate adventures and spend hours looking at some dress on the phone trying to figure out how it was worked.  Sometimes her desire for a certain thread for her casket would have me flying to Europe to prototype it with an ancient textile maker, providing some of the impetus for the variety of threads you all can stitch with today.  Judy also introduced me to a large network of collectors of 17^th century embroidery and we traveled together to see the collections of corporate magnates and well-known actresses, enjoying their hospitality and the access to their lovely pieces.  She allowed me to use all the photography of her embroideries in my course and convinced many other collectors to do the same.  It was her whole hearted support of the idea that the new stitchers of these boxes should be transported to see what we saw and make their own discoveries; elevating so many stitchers to researcher.  Hundreds of the students in that class have now gone on to take this new concept of researcher-embroiderer and go off and do their own investigations as well, many becoming teachers as well – and take Judy’s lead in supporting museum collections.  The ripples of her generosity will go on for generations.

 

Judy and John’s importance in the decorative arts isn’t measured in a wing of a museum being named for them (maybe there should be!); that wasn’t the type of philanthropists that they were.  They both were way more important to the fields they loved than a name on a building.   She and John were both connectors of the type described by Malcom Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point.  They occupied many different worlds and recognized the importance of bringing them together to enable important new ideas to spread; part of the critical piece to make a tipping point.  Judy was a crucial connector in the needlework field.  

 

After her beloved husband died in 2021, the needlework community continued to rally around Judy with special zoom meetings of ‘casketeers’ as the pandemic wore off.  Judy showed us lovely projects she was working on in between her dogged work on the casket.  Finishing the casket became a group effort as a long-term condition in remission came back and started to sap Judy’s stamina and later her ability to embroider.  If there was anyone of the over a thousand casketeers whose casket MUST be finished, it was Judy’s. The two doors were all that was left, and also very emotional for everyone including Judy as the figures represent her and her late husband.  So for the last year of her life, Judy became director of a small army of embroiderers who all contributed their hands to finish the casket.  Conference calls, zooms, and in-person meetings were held with Judy to understand how she wanted to work each motif.  Threads and samples of techniques flew across the country.  Genie made lace, Canby worked a velvet panel with Judy’s name and dates of the casket work, and Ann embroidered the delicate silk dress that the figure of Judy would wear.  Karen carefully made replicas of the beloved King Charles Spaniels who always greeted us at the door.  Deb did the last of the gluing of the panels and put on the tapes and then Karen and Dave took the casket to Alan to replace all the hardware once again.  I had the task of sometimes figuring out how we would do something as there were many novel problems presented especially with separate pieces that needed to be worked remotely from the ground fabric, interpret Judy’s ideas and make samples for her approval and then write instructions and source the right materials.  I also had the pleasure of working the family arms, John’s special silver suit as well as pulling all the doors together with the different elements; and finishing off the random motifs.  It was a labor of our collective love for her and John.  It was also a blessing in disguise as we could repay the generosity she had shown us all collectively and keep us all in regular contact with her as her illness progressed.  

 

Judy’s three children and extended family who are represented on the sides and back adore her casket.  The panel inside says it all and records the 53-year journey from the origin of the casket to its finishing:  Judith Coolidge Carpenter Herdeg 1970-2023.  What the embroidered panel can’t say is the important legacy that Judy has had in the embroidery community from how she touched and helped curators, conservators, collections, projects, future publications, the explosion of technique among embroiderers, and countless stories attached to the other embroidered cabinets destined as family heirlooms and future museum collections that her passions spawned.  

 

A Memorial Service will be held on Sunday, June 9th at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, DE, a reception at Judy’s home in Mendenhall to follow. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions be made to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (“Textiles—in memory of Judith C. Herdeg” / Development Department - MFA Boston 465 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA 02115).  A special fund has been set up to support public symposiums for embroidery.