Embroidered Jacket at Plimoth Plantation

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norma bucko, staff seamstress

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Photo: Ed Nute

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The jacket is finished! For those of you that don’t know, the jacket that I am talking about is a hand-embroidered early 17th-century-style women’s jacket that was recreated at Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

I am proud to be able to say that I was among a group of more than 250 embroiderers to contribute to this project. I spent five long weekends over the past two years helping to hand-embroider and do a bit of lacemaking for this jacket recreation. It was a pleasure to be able to embroider on such a special piece!

The first time that I traveled to Plymouth, and saw the jacket as it was in September 2007, it seemed an insurmountable goal to finish because of the intricacy of the embroidery. But, as time went on, we made more and more progress, and the pieces of the jacket on the frames slowly became more and more populated with embroidery. Then, one by one, the frames were “retired,” as there was no more embroidery left to do.

This exciting, one of a kind project was led by Tricia Wilson Nguyen, who is not only a fantastic embroiderer, but also an engineer. It not only brought historical embroidery to the many embroiderers and lacemakers who worked on the project, but also brought back some embroidery threads that had become unavailable over the years.

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the “Reveal” at Plimouth Plantation on December 10th, but look forward to seeing it on display at an upcoming exhibit at Winterthur Museum in Delaware. I will always remember the many people I met during this project, and seeing the beautiful work that they have done was one of the highlights of each weekend.

Go to http://www.thistle-threads.com/blog/ to learn more about this amazing jacket project and its history.

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Comments (5)

moushka writes: The link sent me off on a two-day web crawl, admiring the incredible jacket and the fascinating historical data provided. What a fabulous project! This is the kind of info I love to see highlighted in Threads.
Posted: 7:01 am on January 6th

sewqueen180 writes: holey moley....that is costume is just beautiful. what a wonderful thing to be a part of. congrats to you and all that helped make that stunning outfit.
Posted: 7:32 pm on January 4th

msbyrdt writes: That is just BEAUTIFUL. What workmanship. I can't rave enough, how beautiful that jacket is. All of you should be very proud of what you've accomplished.
Posted: 12:28 pm on January 4th

disenosgabrielle writes: You surprise me....WOW....what a wonderful work...I have no words.... and I just can say....¡CONGRATULATIONS!...
Posted: 2:48 pm on January 2nd

Rabia writes: Wow, BEAUTIFUL WORK! As a person who LOVES to do handwork, I can appreciate the amount of work such a project took, but as I say to anyone who says "How can you do something like that?' : "You just keep doing it till it's done!" "A journey of a thousand miles..." etc etc!
Posted: 6:27 pm on January 1st

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