Embroidered Pouch with Tablet Woven
Edges
Renonys de la Fueille
Bal d’Aneala, October AS XLVII
Introduction
Pouches were used in the Medieval Period to perform the same
function that pockets perform today. You put things in them to carry around. Pouches
were used by everyone, whether young, old, rich or poor, and used to carry a
wide variety of different objects from coins to religious relics to sweet
smelling substances. This wide usage resulted in a large variety of shapes,
sizes, styles and materials, from the plain functional varieties to elaborately
decorated works of art.
The fourteenth century saw a rise in the popularity of
heraldic display. The main charge on my device is an ivy leaf, so I decided to
embroider this onto a pouch of my colours; purple and green. I am aware that
the theme of this competition is flowers. Below is a picture of what ivy
flowers look like:
They
are not very attractive. Flowers are valued for their beauty, and I believe
that the ivy leaf is much more attractive than its flower. By this reasoning,
my ivy leaf fits perfectly into the theme of flowers.
Materials
Pouches in the medieval period were made from leather or
fabric of various kinds. I chose to make my pouch from materials that I already
had. It is made from leftover wool blend fabric, and lined with some spare
white linen. These materials are typical of extant pieces, as wool and linen
were readily available during the period. I used green two-ply Milford Satin
cotton perle for the tablet weaving along the edges, and the embroidery is
worked in gold three-ply Milford Soft crochet cotton. Cotton is not a fibre
found in extant pieces, due to its lack of availability in Medieval Europe, but
these days it is a whole lot cheaper and readily available. I chose to use it
because I have a lot of it and I couldn’t afford to go out and buy new
materials for this project. If I had unlimited resources I would have used wool
for both the embroidery and the tablet weaving. Another reason to use cotton is
that this is my first attempt at these styles of embroidery and tablet weaving,
and I preferred to use familiar materials.
Methods
The embroidery is worked using split stitch. This stitch was
one of a few used in the Opus Anglicanum technique, popular across Europe from
the late 12th to mid 14th centuries. Split stitch is very
versatile and is suitable for both outlining and filling designs. I chose it
because I liked the look better than stem stitch or chain stitch, and because
my leaf is a curved design I thought split stitch would be more suitable.
The drawstring and hanging cord are both made from
fingerloop braid, I used the five loop fingerloop braid called Purstringe--3 bos reed, 2 bos white, pattern number two on
fingerloop.org.
The tablet weaving is worked in a circular fashion. The weft
is threaded on a needle, and passed through the leather seam from left to
right, then through the shed of the tablet weaving from right to left, and
pulled tight. This creates a tablet-woven tube mounted on the edges of the
fabric, and the weft of the tablet weaving also holds the seams together. Using
this method sews the seams and finishes the edge neatly in a single step. I
used eight tablets for the edging, threaded alternately S and Z. The tassels in
the corners are made out of the leftover weft from the weaving,
Conclusions
I’m pleased with how the embroidery turned out. As a first
try with this technique it looks relatively neat, and the overall look is what
I had envisioned before I started the project. I’d like to try split stitch
with a single strand of silk thread to see if it turns out less fluffy than
with the cotton.
Tablet woven edges is something I have wanted to do for a
long time, but I’m not completely happy with how this weaving turned out. I
don’t like the visible stitching, so next time I will use 10 or 12 cards to
make sure the edges are completely covered. The lining is also a problem, it
can be seen through the stitching in places along the edges, and also I had
trouble with the linen along the top edges. The threads of the linen pulled
apart and fraying, leaving messy looking edges. The point of the weaving is to
neatly finish the edges, so I never anticipated that the top edges would look
so messy. Next time I will make sure I hem any linen that I use. The two top
edges are also crooked, as both sides pulled differently as I was weaving
around the corners. I’m convinced that there is some trick to weaving around
corners, but I couldn’t find any tips after searching for hours on the
internet. Next time I will also try weighting each card’s warp separately. I
tied the warp all together to a table leg, and when it came to untwisting I
ended up with bubbles in the weaving. Individually weighted cards will let me
untwist as I go. It will also help with the problem of half the warp getting
shorter when I split the cards to go along the top.
References:
A Stitch out of Time
Aumônières or Alms
Purses
Crowfoot, Elisabeth, Frances Pritchard, Kay Staniland (2002)
Textiles and Clothing, Boydell Press,
Woodbridge
Fingerloop Braids
Harris, Jennifer, Ed. (2004) 5000 Years of Textiles, The British Museum Press, London
Search the Collections – Victoria and Albert Museum
West Kingdom Needleworkers Guild
http://wkneedle.bayrose.org/Articles/split_stitch.html
