A Preppy Odyssey - Scarf with Brooks Brothers Logo - Project begun (6/21/2011)

Finished Project:  I finished hemming my Golden Fleece scarf this morning (8/12/2011), the embroidery was completed on 8/3/2011.  I called this an Odyssey because I don't often venture into monogramming,  Elizabethan embroidery has been my main area of interest for 15 years.  However, lately monogramming has been intriguing me.

This is a scarf to go with a Preppy outfit - very casual and quirky.   A polo shirt and Seersucker jacket - both from Brooks Brothers.  I love Brooks Brothers' clothing - love the quality and the style.  I have shirts, skirts and sweaters from the early 1990s that look as good as new and I still wear them.

 I downloaded a copy of the BB logo - a sheep suspended by a ribbon.  (Their ribbon reminds me of the motifs used in French antique monogrammed linens.  I think that's why I've always liked their logo so much.  Their logo was adopted in the mid 1850s -  they copied it from the British wool merchants, who copied it from a medieval chivalric order.)

 I printed the logo and colored it in the blue I'll use for the embroidery, then pinned the paper copy to a piece of linen to see how it will look with my outfit.  I think it looks pretty good.   All it needs is a pair of white capris and keds white sneakers.

 I'm redrawing the logo so it will work with embroidery stitches.  You can see the start of my drawing to the left of my outfit above.  I think I'll change the bow and use one very similar to what I used on my pink monogram scarf, which is typically found on old French monograms.

Here are my plans for the embroidery:

The sheep's face will be filled in solid, and so will the bow/ribbon with padded Satin Stitch, possibly the legs.  I will attempt to do "Voided" Satin stitch for the eye.  The sheeps body will be outlined with either button hole stitch or New England Laid to create a scalloped edge (see my drawing in photo above).....

With the project now completed, the following details what plans I was able to keep and what had to change:

 * I used DMC (color 322) coton a broder #25 to embroidery the ribbon, sheep's face, legs and horn in padded satin stitch.

 *DMC Cotton Mouline Special (6 stranded floss)  was used to embroider the buttonhole stitch scallops outlining his body.  I felt the coton a broder was too heavy for these fine scallops.

* Linen is cambric weight, 60ct.  So light weight and drapes wonderfully.  It comes in this beautiful yellow that matches the stripes in my polo  perfectly!

I wanted his eye to be voided  (meaning it was left devoid of any embroidery).  I actually stitched it that way and while it looked great technically, it gave the sheep an evil look.  I asked a friend's opinion and she agreed that he looked evil.  I tried adding a pupil - it wasn't enough.  Finally, filling in the area with long straight stitches running the other way worked.  

Here you see the back of my work.  This is the least tidy padded satin stitch I've done so far, so I'm not real pleased with that.  But, surprisingly on these scarves, you never see the back while wearing them.

The finished scarf with the outfit I planned it for shown  to the left.

I'm pleased with how this turned out.  The colors look great with this outfit, and I know I have several other outfits it will coordinate with beautifully.  

For comparison, here is the original logo (left), and my finished embroidered version:

Adieu to Summer 2011 projects.

Time to begin planning for Autumn....

C'est Bon Bib

This evening I sat down to reproduce an antique French baby's monogrammed bib I saw for sale on etsy.  The bib is for a close friend's long, long awaited grand-daughter, so it's a special occasion requiring something more than a Wal-mart bib!  Anyway, I was going to do a straight reproduction of the antique French monogrammed bib shown here, excluding the lace, because I'm not a lace kind of woman.


Then I got to thinking....


It would be so much more feminine in pink, and I have the perfect shell pink linen.  
Scratch the lace, of course, and replace it with scalloped edges on the linen.
I like the dots, but I think there are too many of them.


So I drew it up with these changes, and I didn't like the 2nd set of butterflies (closer to the neck fastener).  On the original bib, I think they used the same design, but reduced the size of the butterfly.  Nice, but maybe a bit of a boring choice. 


How about doing a side view butterfly?...... Ok,  yesterday, another friend, Elmsley Rose, sent me a link to images of a book titled Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta   - A Sixteenth-century Calligraphic Manuscript inscribed by Georg Bocskay and Illuminated by Joris Hoefnagel.  One of the images is of this cool butterfly.  I love the quirkiness of Elizabethan insects!  See how the butterfly's antennae thicken at the end into a bulbous shape?  They often have a sort of bulbous back end, too - I love that!  So I used his general shape for the outline of my 2nd set of butterflies. 





 Here's my rough draft.  Tomorrow, I'll send it off to Shirley to measure it against her grand daughter for fit (which is why I've scotch-taped the inside of the neck opening to avoid paper cuts!)


I haven't decided on the floss color yet.  My choices are to go with a color that exactly matches the linen (818)  or slightly darker (776).  These are both Coton A Broder by DMC.  The linen is the 60 ct cambric linen.  I guess I'll need to line this bib when it's done, to give it more body or back it with same linen with a batting between.  I need to look into that.


Think Pink!


The following was posted on August  24th, 2011....

The neck opening on my bib pattern had to be enlarged a bit to fit Alaina.  I also moved the neck opening down a little on the bib so the closure "tabs" will be wider.  I've decided to use 2 buttons on one tab, and a button-holed loop on the other tab as a closure.  Most of the old French bibs in my photos had a button and buttonhole, but I wanted a little more room for growth.  Alaina's grandmother, Shirley, and I have agreed that I will work the neck opening last so that she can re-measure Alaina to check for growth.  It may not get buttonhole stitch as I had planned because some of the old bibs show just a hemmed edge for the neck opening. 

Yesterday I began the embroidery.  I 'm padding the outer scalloped edge with DMC Floche in color 818.    I will use Coton a Broder  for the buttonhole stitch, but since I had plenty of the floche thread I decided to use it for the padding.  

Yesterday was also the day of the 5.9 earthquake in Virginia.  All the way up here in Pennsylvania, my house shook, as did I : )   My dog, Byron, slept through the whole thing.  Obviously,  he's not one of those dogs who can predict a quake!

 I'm still not certain how I'll fasten a lining onto the bib although I have a couple ideas.  On some of the old bibs, it looks to me like they did a buttonhole stitch right through the front and back layers.  Does anyone have experience with this?  If you do, please add a suggestion in the comments.  I'd love to hear from you!  Here's a detail of another old French bib - this one quilted - the edge has either satin stitch or buttonhole (probably the latter).  Doesn't it look like the buttonhole edge was worked over the back lining as well?

.......After looking at the photos of old French bibs (like those shown here), I decided that the monogrammed bibs didn't have a layer of batting between front and back.  The buttonhole stitch around the outside perimeter of my bib will be worked through the front and back layer, and that's what will hold the layers together, in addition to hem sewing at the neckline.

It's mid-September and I've completed all of the padding around the outside edge (here you see the padding in progress).

I've also completed monogramming one of the top view butterflies.  I'm padding the other butterflies now.  I work each motif by outlining the padded areas in back stitch, then padding them with long stitches running opposite to the final satin stitch.  The narrow parts of the wings are done in trailing stitch worked over back stitch and one thread laying on top of the back stitches.

10/5/2011:   The bib is coming along swimmingly, as you can see here.  ....Swimmingly, a word I was reminded of recently whilst watching an Audrey Hepburn movie, When Paris Sizzles.  If you get a chance to watch this movie, check out the elegant embroidered sheets Audrey sleeps on.  I'd love to reproduce them!  (If you love monogrammed sheets, check out this website.  They have the most gorgeous vintage sheets I've ever seen:  Fleurdandeol  )

I finished all of the embroidery on the bib, except the scalloped edge, then removed my embroidery from the slate frame.  I cut another piece of pink linen to back the bib with.  There will be no lining.  On the large photo, you can see the basting lines where I sewed the front and back together to keep them in place while I add the satin stitch to the scallops.

I remounted the bib on my slate frame, lacing through both the front and back of the bib.  You can see that I've already added the final satin stitching to 2 scallops along the left side of the photo.  As I work the satin stitch, I've found that if I'm careful to hold the needle perpendicular to the linen as I stitch, the back piece of linen has a fairly nice satin stitched scallop as well.  Also, because I put the back on the bib after all my other embroidery was done, it can not be seen from the back.

As I said, work is progressing 'swimmingly'.....

I finished the bib on October 11th.  The photos don't give you an idea of how dainty it is; it measures 9" in diameter.  The cup & saucer, featured in the photos below, is for a small child.

  The scalloped edge went entirely as planned.  When I had finished the satin stitch around the outside edge, I cut the bib off of the slate frame.  

Next, I removed all of my basting stitches and cut out the neck opening, leaving about 3/8" seam allowance.  I hand stitched a back stitch around the opening, 1/4" in from my seam line, to keep the linen from fraying.  This had to be done by hand, to both the front and back of the bib, because the area around the fastening was too small to sew on a machine.   I made small cuts into the seam allowance (so it would lay flat when turned under) and then whipped stitched the opening closed.

If you enlarge the 2nd photo and look closely at the area around the fastening, you can see that there's a small satin stitched "bar" that runs vertically from the scalloped edge down to the neck opening.  I chose to satin stitch that short edge, rather than turn it under, because it would have been difficult to manage a turned corner and keep it from fraying as you sewed it in such a small area.  Done this way it went very smoothly.

The Back of the Bib, signed and with Alaina's birthdate

Lastly, I sewed on a vintage button and added a button-holed loop to the opposite side to function as a closure.  The button was given to me to use by my friend, Lenora, who's in my Tudor embroidery group.   This button was passed down in her family.   The baby's grandmother, Shirley, is also a member of the embroidery group.  So, I'm sure the bib will remind Shirley of the great times we have had over the years,  getting together to stitch and talk about Tudor embroidery.

Our Tudor embroidery study group is a special interest group affiliated with the EGA (Embroiderers' Guild of America).  Anyone in the Berks County, Pennsylvania area that's interested in joining us, we meet the first Saturday of every month at a local library.  Even if you're just passing through the area, or live in a surrounding county, we'd love to have you join us for a day.  If you're interested, you can contact me at kservello@comcast.net.

I've included a photo of the back of the bib to show the back of the satin stitching.  I wrote a note about who stitched the bib and who it's for on the back, using a micron pen.  I added this while it was still on the slate frame, and thought I was writing on the bottom center of the bib.  But it was after midnight and I guess I was partly delirious.  So, to balance it,  I plan to add a note on the opposite side, giving Alaina's birth date and full name, as soon as I verify her birth date - I want to make sure I get that right, anyway! *Smile*aina Models the 'C'est Bon Bib'

 Before I even set pencil to paper to design this bib, I extracted 2 promises from Alaina's grandmother...

First, that the bib would be used, not set aside for show only for fear of staining it. 

Second, that they send me photos of Alaina wearing the bib.  

Isn't she lovely?  Let's hope she grows up to be an embroiderer!