Embroidered shirt - silk on linen

A lot of the post lately has started with me saying that I havent been writing in a long time, and so will this one. I have been working on orders for others, a lot of sprang actually, and that is always fun. But I have already posted a lot of info on the Lengberg sprang here, and doing the same pattern again and again does not make a good post... But while doing orders I have been working on something new for myself on the side. A shirt with embroideries, something that takes a long time to make and therefore is suitable for a project to do meanwhile. 

Embroideries nowadays is something I do to relaxe, that has changed during the years sense I made the big cap with embroideries, able to see here. Something that I found difficult is now something I almost dont want to finish because its so relaxing while going on. 

 

 

I chose to make a shirt with a separate embroidered worked collar. The fabric is gathered into the collar after the embroidery was finished. I also made a little ruffle. The cuffs are made the same way. The bodies consists of the whole wide of the fabric, 150 cm, folded and with shoulderseams. That is one way of making a shirt if you dont want to gather the entire amount of fabric into the collar. The cuffs and collar are closed with a string and worked bars. They are made with a white silk thread. The fabric is bought from Medeltidsmode and found here. The shirt is handsewn with waxed linen thread.

 

The pattern has a quite gotic feel to it, very symmetrical but were printed in both Schönsperger and Quentel´s patternbooks, 1529 and 1532/1544. It might be older than that and reused in the patternbooks. The pattern is available with and without pointy edges. I used the one with straight edges. And I worked with cross stitch in silk directly on the fabric of the shirt. I used the same colour as for the embroidered cap which is three different colours of silk put together. Why make things simple?!

 

 

 

 

 

The patternbooks is now at The Metropolitan museum of Art in New York. This page here is from Quentels book and show the pattern as I used it, without the pointy edges. Its the second pattern from the top. Here you can look at it yourself. 

 

 

 

There is a lot of inspiration out there and here are some of mine used for this project. All from the same period of time as the printed pattern.