I’m repairing and refreshing all of the garb I’ve made four my friend L over the years.
I forgot to take pictures for most of it, but this linen gauze chiton is my second experiment with embroidery.
The gauze ended up being too weak to support the shoulder attachments, even when sewing through the hem. So I added a cotton twill band at the top. I tucked it into the top hem, which ended up having one on the inside and one on the outside of the dress… and I kind of liked how they both looked, so I just went with it.
And then I was looking for a style of embroidery that would be both reinforcing (holding the band to the gauze with minimal stress on the fabric) and beginner friendly (hopefully fast to finish).
A friend of mine has been advocating for an Indian embroidery style called nakshi kantha (running stitches decorated with interlaced designs). I went looking for a pattern that felt even vaguely Greek/Hellenistic/Roman, and ended up with a waves design.
In 2022-2023, The Metropolitan Museum of Art had an exhibit about polychromy in antiquity. I had long been familiar with the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung sponsored (and exhibited) work on reconstructing ancient aesthetics, and I’d even seen a few examples at the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, but this was my first time seeing so many of their pieces. And I was struck by the Small Herculaneum Woman statue because not only did it have tastefully vibrant pink and teal, but the teal layer was painted to be translucent with the pink under layer showing through! And this was based on the actual pigment residue.
And that blue edge that’s goes up vertically on her left side has a wave pattern! So that’s what I was thinking about as I chose this design.
I found youtube tutorials with four or five lines of running stitches. After asking several friends’ opinions, the consensus was the 4 line version because there was less unused space.
And I scaled up to cover the whole width of the twill tape (and hoping to lower the difficulty).
I think it would look better smaller, and I’m mostly reserving judgement about how much I like it until I’ve seen how it goes through the laundry a couple times and if it snags on things because it’s so loose.
But I do tentatively like it and am kind of proud of myself