Mending the Faded Gilded Lily

This wonderful cloth

was given to me from my friend Vivian from her late mother's incredible stash of vintage linens.

The style of the gryphons  makes me think that cloth was designed and embroidered around 1910.

It is often at the center of our Shabbat table. When it gets soiled I hand wash it and iron it. This time the olive green braid fell off. The wide zig zagging embroidery that secured the trim to the cloth just rotted away.

I removed the trim and discovered that it was actually made out of woven/braided copper wire. I scrubbed the tarnish off, ironed the cloth and sat down to re attach the trim. I used the line of discolored linen as my guide for attaching the braid.

I stitched the braid with tiny tacks of metallic thread.

As I worked I was able to look closely at the embroidery. I recalled that when this cloth was new in my household there were a few old tarnished sequins attached to the scales of the gryphons.

Now there is just one lone jewel. There had been a hand full. This one is plastic so I assume it was added some time after this piece had been made. The little plastic sew-on gem made me feel braver about doing a bit of restoration work after I had completed sewing the copper braid back onto the piece.

Here you can see that the piece had been enhanced with a bit of oil paint. The embroidery floss has faded more than the blue paint.

This sort of a piece was sold as"artistic embroidery". It may have been sold as a kit from a shop or it might have been ordered from a magazine.

As I looked closely, it was pretty clear that each of the torn brown threads had once secured either a sequin or a jewel.

I slowly began restitching bits of glimmer in each spot when one had gone missing.

As I worked, text from a needlework book I had read when I was a kid began swirling around my brain. The author of the book went on a long but very polite diatribe about the bad taste of old fashioned needlework where the lily was not just gilded but was overly embellished with the addition of paint and sequins and paste jewels. I realized that I was returning this old piece to it's original "bad taste".

You hay have noticed that I used three different kinds of sequins on the scales. I used some old flat sequins that are losing their metallic coating (the tarnished look is exactly right for this piece) . I also used some teeny faceted silver sequins and mostly I used iridescent  sequins. I left all of the broken brown threads. It's a nice way to show the passage of time.

I'm not exactly sure why this project gave me such pleasure. Perhaps is is knowing that I am one of at least three women who had put her hand to this particular piece of embroidery. I keep thinking that this cloth must have looked magical in gas-light, twinkling with all of it's embellishments.

Like with so many of these old textiles that have been entrusted to my care, I am not sure that I would have chosen this piece. I have, over the years, gotten more and more fond of it and feel obligated to care for it.

Completing this mend has left me ready to start on my next piece of real work.