This beautiful crewel-worked textile circa 1930-1940 is a family heirloom, a stunning example of good design and perfect execution.
Frances Normandin, great-grandmother to our clients, designed the brilliant layout and worked the piece, a depiction of their family farm house near Gales Creek on the utskirts of Forest Grove.
She was born in 1897 and grew up in Portland, attending St. Mary’s Academy, where her artistic talent began to show itself. She was a gifted painter, worked in the mediums of beadwork, woodcarving, and various kinds of needlework. She lived to be 97 and was still making beadwork bell ornaments right up until the end, even though she was legally blind.
(We conserved another of her pieces: Frances Normandins Bellhanger.)
We conserved the piece, cleaning the stains as possible, retying existing knots and/or infilling areas where losses occur.
At completion we will recreate a hanging mechanism for its next generation.
Crewel is distinguished from embroidery by the use of two threads of fine worsted wool
instead of cotton or silk threads, and the word may derive from the Welsh word ‘krua,’ meaning wool. The needle used has a wide body, large eye, and sharp point.
The stitches used are many of the same as in embroidery: chain, split, stem, couched, satin, backstitch, knots, and seed stitches. You can see many examples of crewel stitches in the details of broken areas above. The wool creates a heavy texture and loft. It is not a counted-thread embroidery but a style of free embroidery often done on tightly woven firm fabric, like a linen twill, silk linen, velvet, silk organza, and even jute.
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The crewel textile lived hanging on the wall of the farmhouse, uncovered with wood smoke and tobacco smoke, all of which contributed to distorted color of the linen and the stains, some of which appeared to be water spots on dirty linen.
Before proceeding, Kate test cleaned all the bright colors to see if the dyes moved using cotton swabs wet with distilled water. Paper towels were underneath to catch evidence of any migrating dyes. When NO dyes migrated, she frankly retested all of them, disbelieving. No dyes migrated!
Kate removed the back lining, because it was old, even dirtier, and had to be removed in order for her to infill stitches. A new stabilization was added after infill.
The old backing was all hand-stitched, tiny little precise stitches. Along the way bug debris was encountered, shown above in image three. In this case a worm carcass had stained the bottom edge of the piece, a mystery solved. In fact, insects had made their way between the linen/wool textile and backing, and probably eaten the wools from behind. Frances must have kept a clean house, because the piece was in excellent condition with few losses, given its exposure on a farm.
Kate vacuumed the piece gently with textile attachments to remove surface debris, both front and backsides, before wet cleaning.
Finally a clean towel absorbed the excess water, and the piece was blocked and left to naturally air dry.
The textile is cleaned, but I want to step back to look at some images (before cleaning)
to share some surprising comparisons and talk about caring for a textile.
These images show the front side of the crewelwork on the left (above) or bottom (below),
and the backside, right (above) or top (below).
For those who don’t know, it is important when doing needlework that you pay attention to the backside and keep it neat, so as not to create knots or pull unwanted threads through. This is even more critical in textile conservation, where a pulled knot can deteriorate a fragile textile.
The back side of the Flemish Sofa’s seat tapestry, Hearst Castle.
Plus, even though the textile was uncovered/unprotected, it must have been shown on a wall with little ambient light from outdoors, because though the dyes had better mordants than the dyes in the older Hearst piece shown left and below for comparison (and because geeky stuff like this turns us on), the older dyes, many of which were vegetable dyes, fade quickly.
Flemish Sofa from Hearst Castle, above,
front versus back, shown during reweaving. We have tried to imagine what the sofa, right, might have looked like when the dyes were vibrant! The intensity of the colors has faded. Textiles conservators have the privilege of seeing true colors of objects versus the dusty faded aged colors because we get to see the backs of the textiules!
THAT should change the way you see
things next time you visit a museum!
It is important to keep textiles and paintings out of direct light, and know that even ambient light and fluorescent lighting can cause damage over a much longer time. You can place hanging textiles under proper glass with UV protection to help maintain their colors.
If your piece is a large textile, consider only displaying it on special occasions, or in a dark room, one where you can keep shades drawn. On the other hand, putting keepsakes away completely results in situations where the family doesn’t hear the stories, and therefore may not value the pieces when family members pass on — so our advice is to strike a balance!
INFILL
The crewel yarns arrived, and Kate began infill. She was able to use the closest match possible to the original colors, especially on the border, above right.
There were three yarns that Kate could not match exactly — two greens and an orange. They’ve faded enough that the infill yarns a just a bit off.
Someone long ago also added two different yarns; possibly they repaired it or Frances ran out of the color she wanted. It is doubtful most people would notice.
There were two to three repair yarn colors around the outside, infill created at an unknown time, by Frances or other family members. The yarns were both different colors and also the textures did not match. Kate made a determination to only remove the extraordinarily odd infill areas, and leave the repairs which blended well.
Kate began infill with the two border colors, above.
In the border and the image itself, other than the oddly colored infill mentioned above,
the decision to infill was judged based on missing yarns, or threadbare or broken yarns (from abrasion or moths). If the yarns were intact but threadbare, Kate often left the historic yarn intact and added to the piece by overlayering with new yarn.
If not, the yarns were carefully removed. This was actually the most time consuming part of the process because it is possible to damage the piece while removing the yarns.
Three quarters of the way through Kate found the darker yarn which actually matched the outer border, as it had slipped off the back of the treatment table.
*sigh*
Of course she went back and redid the completed infill!
Above and below, various inner infill areas. This was more fun
because Kate was able to use different crewel stitches!
There were three colors that Kate could not match close enough to satisfy her design eye, though she had every one of the Appleton Bros of London 100% wool crewel colors! One of the purples, one of the peaches, and one of the pinks. In all cases it was due to the fading dyes not matching current available yarns.
BORDER STABILIZATION AND REPAIR
Turning to the border linen stabilization and repair, remember the bug that stained and also apparently caused the disintegration of the bottom hem edge? (Above, reminders.) This was only one of the exceptions Kate had to work around as she stabilized the linen for framing. The goal was to allow the largest consisent linen edge for framing.
The following was performed, and images are above:
- A heavy 1 1/2-inch unbleached hemp twill tape was pinned to the edge at 1 3/8-inch wide.
- Mitchell used a running stitch (locked every few inches) to place the tape for hand-stitching.
- A locking backstitch circled the outer edge approximately 1/4-inch from the tape edge.
- The rips were stabilized with a couching stitch.
- Corners were stabilized with both running and locking backstitch in a pleasing pattern. It was important to Kate that her hand-stitching match Frances’ lovely work.
- Finally, all parts stabilized, we decided to use a zigzag machine stitch to give
Deann Holtz* a strong edge with which to stretch the piece during framing.
*Deann Holtz was an independent framer; we passed the piece to her at the end.
Unseen during the assessment, Kate found several small rips in the linen fiber, and darned holes and rewove areas as she worked the edge stabilization.
Before cleaning/after treatment, above; The piece came quite clean without dyes running.
ONLY around the bug carcass did stains persist.
Details of the piece after treatment, below!
Your Antique Quilt
(applies to many textiles);
How do I Take
Care of THIS?
(about several antiquities, including textiles.)
May be reposted if our url + copyright is used as reference.
