Pleatwork Embroidery

This is a fragment of a cuff that dates from theTudor era. Located in the Museum of London, is has not been studied due to the fragility of the fragment. The museum description is as follows " A sleeve fragment found in Worship Street, circa 1501-1599, wool and silk, 200mm at widest".

"A fragment of garment probably part of a sleeve, with gathered cuff and embroidery ( smocking ). Dark brown weave wool, fragmentary, with fraying edges. One edge with fine pleats held in place with gathering stitches and smocked embroidery in a pale brown thread. Under a microscope the thread looks like a floss silk. The gathered section measures 80 mm across and is 50mmdeep. The embroidery forms a diamon pattern enclosing a pattern of four smaller diamond shapes, in what appears to be silver metal thread wrapped around a silk core, now very discoloured and decomposed. The main diamond pattere is bordered with three lines of bold sitches on each side. Each of these bordering stitches is offset to form a decorative pattern "

In recreating the cuff I used a modern pleater to do the pleats. If this was to be done by hand the pleats would be done by running threads evenly every 1/8". I did not have access to the proper silver thread. Modern wrapped threads, such as Japan 5 would give the proper look but being that they are not real metal they would not hold up to the drawing through the pleats. Instead I used 2 strands of a fine passing thread instead. It does not give the same thick line, but it does replicate the design nicely. I also opted to do the full pattern in the silver thread instead of adding the silk floss to the pattern.

It is interesting to note, that many argue against this type of technique being feasible for wear, but the threads hold the pleating in place extremely well, in fact in the sample shown here, the gathering threads have been removed.

I put together a small fragment of simple stem/outline stitch through pleating to see if it would duplicate some of the simple chemises seen in the portraiture. More important to me, was to test the structure of the embroidery itself as well as try to establish some type of formula for fabric to pleat to finished size.

I used hankerchief weight linen, approximately 36"wide and used a modern pleater to gather the pleats. As with the cuff sample above, if this was to have been done by hand, approx 4 rows of gathering threads would need to be run, approx 1/8" in lenght for each stitch and 1/8" apart.

I drew the pleats up very tight, and then ran 2 rows of outline/stem stitch, done with fairly tight tension. When I pulled out the gathering threads, the pleating relaxed to about 10 inches in finished length.

The sample did not need the gathering threads for structure, nor did it need any form of backing to keep it in place. My conclusions are that this is a possible technique that may have been used to create this style of camicia.

An extant fragment of a shirt from the find at the Alpirsbach Monastery dating from the 16^th century documents the usage of a honeycomb-like stitch to control the pleating_.

This is the collar of a shirt that was one first pieces that I tried to duplicate possible period techniques on. The pleating was all hand done, the running stitches about 1/4" apart. The stitches are very simple outline and trellis stitches, done very much like modern smocking. The gathering threads in this case were left in to help provide stucture to the garment.