Frills and furbelows

[wolfinthewood]

I have spent most of the last week indexing mantua_maker’s forthcoming book. It’s a thick manual of sewing techniques and projects, so I now have a vast (and entirely theoretical) knowledge of sewing. I was especially fascinated by the short section based on eighteenth century decorative pleating techniques, which she researched and recreated from surviving garments and paintings. She’s good on ruffles too.

I knew I’d once come across an Elizabethan song about sewing, written by an unknown woman, so after I’d delivered the index I tracked it down.

A Gentlewoman that married a yonge Gent who after forsooke [her,] whereuppon she tooke hir Needle in which she was excelent and worked upon hir Sampler thus:

Come give me needle, stitch cloth, silke and chaire,
That I may sitt and sigh and sow and singe,
For perfect coollours to discribe the aire
A subtile persinge changinge constant thinge.
No false stitch will I make, my hart is true,
Plaine stitche my Sampler is for to complaine
How men have tongues of hony, harts of rue,
True tongues and harts are one, men makes them twain.
Give me black silk, that sable suites my hart,
And yet som white, though white words do deceive;
No greene at all, for youth and I must part,
Purple and blew, fast love and faith to weave.
Mayden no more, sleepeless ile go to bedd;
Take all away, the work works in my hedd.

Anonymous (before 1603)

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Comments

[artnouveauho.livejournal.com]

I love this. Evocative and painful. Thank you for finding and posting it.