Preliminary design

After much poring over pics and notes of extant pieces, I went ahead and created my design. The finished coif size will be approximately 9" by 17", which is similar in size to coif 64.101.1258 at the Met, which is my inspiration piece. For flower motifs, I have chosen borage, cornflower, honeysuckle, rose, violet, strawberries and peapods. I also have a few birds, butterflies, caterpillars and spiders (of course). The Plimoth jacket has some detached buttonhole lace on the pea pod coverings, and the butterfly wings. Although I love that idea, I haven't yet decided if I will do it for certain, since I'm unable to see specific examples on extant pieces, although I do respect the work of Dr. Tricia Wilson-Nguyen, who headed up the jacket project. I'm using soie perlee, and I may incorporate some gilt silk twist, but that is also up in the air. I found a medium weight linen in my fabric collection that is approximately 80 threads per inch (after taking 3 square-inch samples) which is higher than some extant pieces, but seems safely in the real of 'not too fine, but fine enough'. I also have a ton of size 14 oes, which I should check the diameter of versus the Met piece, which uses 2.5 mm spangles. I'm thinking the majority of the stitching will be detached buttonhole with return for object bodies, and maybe some trellis and ceylon for the accent animals, since I love the way the Plimouth jacket caterpillars look with the ceylon! The gold rinceaux vines will be with my beloved plaited braid, of course, with some reverse chain on the little squiggles, but I may experiment with some other types when this project is complete.

Here's the preliminary design: