I've debated with myself over getting some type of magnifier, either one that "stands" on the upper thorax, or one that affixes to the sewing machine---which seems more limiting. You have to wonder at some of the antique and even vintage stitching you see, no? There was an exhibit at CMA of odds and ends---drawings, paintings, some textiles, perhaps some enamel work, as I recall the exhibit. All I actively remember are some drawings by Ingres and by Picasso and a piece of white-on-white tambour work from the late-18th/early-19thC, in India. To see the stitches, one looked through a lens set in the display case wall which directed the line of vision through a second lens mounted in front of the work: unbelievably---and I use that term carefully consideredly---finely woven cotton worked over in at least equally fine cotton thread. The tambour hook was included; if you looked at it at *juuuusssstt* the right angle, you could detect the merest irregularity at the end of the shaft, and that was the hook part of the hook. The fabric thread count had to number in the hundreds. If a single tambour stitch was no larger than an interstice.... Mind-blowing. It really was. Er...is. And if you peered closely, focused your mind as well as your eyes, you could see the stitches themselves which under strong magnification were as regular and even as anything that could have been produced by a machine today.
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Date: 2010-05-23 09:09 pm (UTC)I've debated with myself over getting some type of magnifier, either one that "stands" on the upper thorax, or one that affixes to the sewing machine---which seems more limiting.
You have to wonder at some of the antique and even vintage stitching you see, no?
There was an exhibit at CMA of odds and ends---drawings, paintings, some textiles, perhaps some enamel work, as I recall the exhibit. All I actively remember are some drawings by Ingres and by Picasso and a piece of white-on-white tambour work from the late-18th/early-19thC, in India.
To see the stitches, one looked through a lens set in the display case wall which directed the line of vision through a second lens mounted in front of the work: unbelievably---and I use that term carefully consideredly---finely woven cotton worked over in at least equally fine cotton thread.
The tambour hook was included; if you looked at it at *juuuusssstt* the right angle, you could detect the merest irregularity at the end of the shaft, and that was the hook part of the hook.
The fabric thread count had to number in the hundreds. If a single tambour stitch was no larger than an interstice....
Mind-blowing. It really was. Er...is.
And if you peered closely, focused your mind as well as your eyes, you could see the stitches themselves which under strong magnification were as regular and even as anything that could have been produced by a machine today.