"Women's plain and flowered sattin mitts"

 Mitts, mitts and more mitts.  I've been on a roll and have way too many pairs but I continue enjoying the research and construction of them.  What's a body to do?

I finally decided to make satin mitts out of some Duchess satin I had.  I made a pair of fancy unlined ones as a sample for a workshop I taught but this post is about another pair.  I finally decided to tackle the embroidery on my favorite extant pair of mitts in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

These are constructed of silk satin and they are fully lined.  There are just so many interesting details but I particularly like the piecing on these mitts.  I can just imagine an 18th century seamstress pulling together her scraps to construct these.  I decided not to piece mine but really wanted to focus on the embroidery in particular.  Let's take a closer look.

Note that there is no herringbone stitching which is the most common embroidery you see on mitts.  The straight lines and the stitching around the thumb are double feather stitch.  While I've stitched feather stitch before, I've never stitched double feather and never done either in this tiny scale.   The wavy line in the middle is stitched with single feather stitches with straight stitches forming the floral motifs.   I also noted that the seams appear to be whip stitched on the outside which is interesting.

So how did I copy the embroidery?  First I resized the above cropped image to the size I wanted my finished embroidery to be.  Then I put it on a light tablet and traced it.

Because the image isn't exactly symmetrical, I mirror imaged it and printed both side by side.

Once again, I used my light table to trace this design on my mitts.  Note--when tracing the double feather stitch, I only traced the zig zag and not the individual stitches.  Likewise with the wavy line--I only traced the line itself knowing to change the direction of the feather stitches with each wave after studying the original photograph for some time.  I use a regular fine lead mechanical pencil for tracing embroidery on 18th century designs.  My quilted petticoat research noted that pencil markings could often be seen on extants.

The embroidery was stitched with 1 strand of Soie d'Alger silk floss.  

The mitts were constructed in my usual manner for lined mitts.  I'm quite pleased with the way they turned out.

The two layers of silk will be quite warm for the winter as well!

Also--Two other pairs of mitts, created as workshop samples for teaching:

Satin unlined mitts.  Embroidery worked with 1 strand of Soie d'Alger silk floss.  Faggoting stitch worked with 4 strands.  Tips are lined with taffeta.

Taffeta mitts, unlined, embroidery worked with 1 strand of Soie d'Alger silk floss.  The embroidery for these was copied from a pair in the Amsterdam Museum.

Next mitts on the menu will be French blue lambskin which will be made for teaching purposes.