Yes, you can’t decide to stitch a casket without thinking about what silk you will use and which colors. Just like with the Plimoth Jacket, this was a drawn out process. But unlike the Plimoth Jacket, there were more options. When we were working on the jacket, we had much fewer colors that we needed and we had some constraints to work under. We didn’t have the volume of threads to allow special dyeing of silk (which is done in the multi-kilogram scale), so we had to work with what existed in the line. That was feasible as we only needed two blues – not a family of five perfectly shaded ones to stitch a needlelace tent!
It has taken Lamora Haidar, owner of Access Commodities, and I over a year to work out a historic color collection for this course. I would like to say that we are 100% done, but that would not be true. There is always tweaking to be done as well as projections to make sure we have enough of the colors and can stagger the dyeing. Yes – dyeing. I am letting the cat out of the bag.
Why would we want to establish a 17th century historic color pallet? First it was important for us to standardize the threads that are being made for the class to allow stock to be held for my classes and any encores I may need to run. We also wanted to make sure there would be enough so as people worked, they could order more. Second, we both wanted to provide the best matches to the old embroideries as well as shade color families to give stitchers the range needed to complete their masterpiece.
Maybe you can imagine the logistical problems in doing this – maybe not. Well, I’ll show you over the next thread of this blog how this happened.
Tricia
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