PLAITED BRAID STITCH DECODED - Web Article by Leon Conrad

PLAITED BRAID STITCH

DECODED

I have been looking at items of Elizabethan embroidery for a long time, and Plaited Braid Stitch, which features very frequently on many of these items has always fascinated me. For a long time, I could not work out how they did it.

Although I was aware of sources which provided instructions on how to work this stitch, such as Grace Christie’s Samplers and Stitches (Batsford, London, 1930; recently reprinted), I could not get this stitch to work for me, and the result did not seem to me to look like the Elizabethan originals.

Over the course of a few months in Spring / Summer 2003, I had the opportunity of studying historical items in the V&A Reserve Collection which were unmounted, giving me access to viewing the front and back of the pieces. The complicated interlacing on the front was in stark contrast to the vertical stitches placed at right angles to the line of stitching like the rungs of a ladder.

I studied the reverse side to work out the stitcher’s starting and finishing points. I noticed that the finishing ends had been slipped under the stitches on the back of the work. To start a sequence, the stitcher had used a knot. I was able to take photographs of these items, and thanks to the ease of digital technology, was able to load the images onto my computer. I took the front and back images of the section I had chosen, showing the start of a line of Plaited Braid Stitch. I then flipped the image of the reverse side and matched this up to the image of the front. This allowed me to follow the sequence of stitching.

I printed out the image of the front of this section many times at the biggest size I could fit onto a page. I then drew over the lines, stitched through the paper, doodled with thread on fabric, cursed, slept, meditated, ruminated and became obsessed with finding out the original sequence. After about a week of this, I managed to work it out.

I then went back to the V&A and looked at other items with Plaited Braid Stitch to verify that the method I had worked out could be traced back to other pieces. I found that it could.

The full description of how to work this stitch can be found in a 2-part article in the Fall and Winter 2003 issues of The Historic Needlework Guild’s Magazine, Fine Lines (Vol 8; Issues 1,2). If you are interested in obtaining copies of these issues, please email me for further details.

Pictures showing my working of Plaited Braid Stitch are featured below.

PLAITED BRAID STITCH SAMPLE by Leon Conrad

Click on the picture of Twisted Chain Stitch below for information on the Japanese hand-made needles which I recommend when working this stitch.
Click here for information on the metal thread I recommend for working these types of stitches.

TWISTED CHAIN STITCH SAMPLE by Leon Conrad