This trim was done for Lady Sophia Kress in exchange for her sewing some Byzantine tunics and an Italian 12th Night dress for me. She considered it a fair trade, but I really think I got the better end of the deal. Ah, well! She wanted some blackwork trim to put on the rim of her German “poof hat”, the style of which was popular in the 15th and 16th centuries. The hats are usually made of linen and lie close around the temples, poofing out in a bulbous shape high in the back. Sophia figured out how to make one and I was happy to supply her with some trim for it.

She decided on the curling line drawing on the right-most side of page 69 of Curious Works Press’ printing of Nicholas Bassee’s “New Modelbuch” of 1568. It’s a repeating line pattern that lent itself well to stem and outline stitch. I had some white clothing linen on hand that I used, as well as black Splendor silk in two strands. I had scanned the pattern out of the book, sized it in Word so it would print out in the right proportion, and used my trusty lightbox to transfer the pattern with ballpoint pen. I hemmed the fabric and lashed it into a scroll frame.

I had received a tip from Lady Caiterina nic Sheamuis to roll some ribbon in along with the rest of the fabric so that the middle wouldn’t sag like usually happens with scroll frames. That idea worked very well for this project. Overall, I think the embroidery took upwards of 16-20 hours to complete. I only have that much of an estimate because I spent 8 hours in LAX waiting for a flight and got almost half of it done. The length of the trim was about 23 inches long. The pictures below are after I got home from that flight, and are awful because that’s still when I only had a camera phone to take pictures with.

The scan on this page was taken from page 69 of Curious Works Press' German Renaissance Patterns for Embroidery: A Facsimile Copy of Nicolas Bassee's New Modelbuch of 1568, Austin, 1994.

The two pictures of the trim on this page were taken by myself sometime before October 2005.