Fellow Spiders, Amid complaints of a paucity of postings and a suggestion that interesting topics be introduced, I would like to draw your attention to a project now in its infancy at Plimoth Plantation. Plimoth Plantation is a non-profit enterprise in living history. Here there is a recreated town simulating the time of 1627 where one may visit homes and converse with English Villager re-enactors with equal time given to Wampanoags who resided in the area of Plimoth as well. It is supposed to be a recreation, more of less of the original Plimoth colony, where the English religious objectors known in the US as Pilgrims resided. Since I am fairly sure I haven't described this well, I encourage you to go to _http://www.plimoth.org/features/_ (http://www.plimoth.org/features/) to read a more well thought out and informed description. Over the next year Plimoth Plantation will be recreating a 17th century jacket similar to that of Margaret Laton in the Victoria and Albert Museum. This is for an exhibit on adornment in which it will be compared to Wampanoag finery. The organization is anticipating that it will take 3000 hours of embroidery and 650 hours of bobbin lacemaking to make the jacket which will be adorned with metallic bobbin lace. Great lengths are being gone to in order to make the bobbin lace part as historically correct as possible, even to the extent of making spangles that resemble the original spangles. The Victoria and Albert Museum is to be applauded for lending their support to this project. The entire enterprise is being blogged at the following site and blog entries from Nov 27 and Nov. 23 found under the topic "lace", but also from Nov. 26th found under the topic "general" are to be found at this site: _http://www.plimoth.org/embroidery-blog/index.php?mode=viewcat&cat_id=11_ (http://www.plimoth.org/embroidery-blog/index.php?mode=viewcat&cat_id=11) For the embroidery and soon, for the bobbin lace, there is a plan that one may buy a kit of materials carefully chosen to resemble the original materials with instructions for producing either the embroidery or the lace. One may simply keep the embroidery or lace when it is finished- part of the scheme is that the kit price includes a tax deductible contribution to the project. Or one may submit part of the embroidery or three repeats of the lace to the project, and if your skills are considered good enough, you would be allowed/invited to go up to the Plantation and participate in lacemaking and embroidery sessions. I think that lunch is included, but not overnight accommodation. However, there is the incentive of special docent tours and meeting like minded people there to compensate for this. The plan, as of now, is to have two lacemaking pillows going. You would sign up, I guess to man a pillow for a period of time. Hopefully different tensions of working will not be noticeable in the finished project. I myself am quite interested to see what they manage to put in the kit, and to get my hands on some hand produced spangles. Although the kit is not yet available for the bobbin lace, the embroidery kit is available and I ordered one to give as a Christmas gift. The embroidery directions are very clear, it seems to me, and there is a CD, but I thought it would be in bad taste for me to actually take out the CD and look at it, since this is a gift for another and I was already taking tremendous liberties by taking apart the entire kit to check it out. The stitches illustrated include some detached buttonhole type embroidery which is very similar to needlelace in concept. There is a delightful caterpillar and butterfly to make in the kit, along with flowers. Carolyn Hastings of the New England Lace Guild is doing a great deal of research to make sure that the lace pattern is historically correct, so we need not fear what we so frequently see, an inappropriate lace. She is even visiting the jacket at the V & A and looking at period lace. Three cheers for her dedication. I have put my name on the list of those to be notified when the kit is available. It sounds like a fun project, and frankly, in the US, how often does the opportunity arise to recreate something from the 1620's? Devon
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