Loose threads

Not only did 2020 send me into a massive sewing block: when I do something, I apparently can't get round to write blog entries. This once it at least means that I publish a blog entry in the correct month for the challenge, even if I finished it during the summer.

 

This challenge's theme is "Community". There are dozens of costuming people out there and a number of groups, both on- and offline, where I have learned a lot. I learned the basics of sewing in school, and some more from my parents (who both sewed quite a lot when I was a child - I have no idea how they found the time!). My maternal great grandmother did amazing things around the late nineteen-teens and twenties, and weaved a lot throughout her life and while she had lost her dexterity and eyesight by the time I was old enough to learn, her stuff, too, has been a huge inspiration (and the collection of dresses in her attic a trip through late 19th and 20th century fashion). There is no shortage of a textile-related community around me, but for this project it so happened that it became a collaboration with my paternal grandmother, who I have spent a lot of time with all through my childhood up until now, and who taught me to cross-stitch* and tatting. She also passed on some wisdoms from _her_ mother, such as "Noone will see how much time you spent on the project, or how many times you started over, but everyone will see how the final result looks". I am sure all of us detailed-obsessed costumers with a seam-ripper as a favourite tool ouf of necessity can relate...

 

The origins of this project idea has been lost in the mists of history, but I think my grandmother and my mother was looking in a magazine and found a set of materials for embroidered mittens some time last year. My mother (like me) can't knit, and while I am sure both of them could handle embroidery none of them felt up to it, so it was decided that my grandmother would make and felt the mittens, and I would embroider them.

 

The pattern and instructions are contemporary, but the material and technique is really a product of the mid 19th century and one of the areas were my nerdisms, forestry history and textiles, cross over: basically, the technique is found in a lot of places around the world I'm sure, but in Sweden had a stronghold in Floda in Dalarna. Around the mid 19th century, large forests went from a dangerous nuisance (home to things that would eat your lifestock, harbour highwaymen and easy to get lost in) where you'd find essential materials for houses or grazing for your cattle to a hard cash producing asset, with the arrival of mechanized sawmills on a larger scale. Forest rich areas suddenly had cash, and with that cash one could buy chemically dyed yarns. The more colours the better, and there is no such thing as too much. My mittens are rather muted in comparison...

 

The embroidery can either be done on fulled wool fabric - for mittens, clothes, pillows etc etc, or densely knitted and/or fulled knitted fabric, such as mittens. There are some wonderful examples, from Dalarna and elsewhere, at the Nordiska museet collections. For wool fabric, the pattern would likely be drawn directly on the fabric first, for knitted fabric I guess the only way would have been to do it on free hand. Which I was not quite up to for a symmetrical pattern, so I cheated and used the water soluable pattern paper that came with the set of materials.