Revised Design

I substituted a pomegranate for the strawberry. The strawberry wasn't visually interesting enough, and I haven't used a pomegranate before. Plus, pomegranates come up frequently in monochrome embroidery, and strawberries do not, although they are often seen in polychrome embroidery. Plus, I moved the grasshopper's rear end. :)

Shift Design

For the design, I am doing a floral band with honeysuckle, rose, borage, a gilliflower, and a strawberry. The designs of the flowers are all hand-drawn by me, using the same templates I created for my polychrome coif. 

When I originally drew the band, I made it two inches wide, based on Janet Arnold's drawing of shift 1979-14. However, my husband pointed out, and I agreed, that the design seemed a bit too wide- and re-examining Arnold's drawing, it does seem to indicate that the design itself, not counting the "border", is less than two inches. I shrunk my design down to 85% of the original, which gives it a width of 1.625 inches, which seems visually to be more accurate.

The floral band will repeat 1.5 times (approximate) on the bodice of the shift, and 2 times down the length of the arm. I chose to do 4 isolated animal motifs, as this is in keeping with my inspiration piece. I chose the owl from Richard Shorleyker's "A Schoole-house for the Needle", as I am a senior member of the East Kingdom's embroiderers' guild, Athena's Thimble, and owl symbol is the owl. The other three motifs- a grasshopper, cat, and turtle, come from textile t.88-1925 at the Victoria and Albert museum. This is a late 16th century English piece that is ink on linen, and is surmised to be for embroidery. (These animals also have special meaning to me, and I like the idea of wearing them close.) The animals are all about 1.25-1.5 inches square, in keeping with the original sizes of the extant shift. I may need to move the grasshopper ever so slightly to the left, so his back end isn't so close to the floral border.

Project the Nexte

I've been pondering my next embroidery project. I had decided to revisit monochrome embroidery ("blackwork") but I wasn't completely enthralled with the idea of doing another coif, although I do love them.

While flipping through Janet Arnold's "Patterns of Fashion 4" I came across Smock T.2-1956 at the Victoria and Albert's Museum. I love these motifs- I love Shoreleyker's designs. AND it would give me the opportunity to use some of the designs from T.88-1925, which is a panel of ink on linen, postulated to be for embroidery. This AWESOME piece has an elephant, a rhinoceros, a turtle, a cockatrice, and all sorts of other lovely creatures.

But I had a problem. With a date of 1620-1630, it's a little too late for my preferred period (1570s). It's also the only example that I know of with these isolated plant and animal motifs. Earlier (1560s-1590s) monochrome embroidered shifts often feature bands of floral embroidery, often with the curved vines that is so common in late 16th century English embroidery. And at least one of them, smock 1979-14 at the National Museums of Scotland, has the floral bands interspersed with the isolated plant and animal motifs.

So my plan is to create a design that uses bands of floral embroidery interspersed with the isolated animal motifs, and work it onto the pieces of a late 16th century English shift.

First step- creating the design.