[Peacock Dress] A mystery solved?

[peacockdress]

Another embroidery sample arrived from India on Friday. As I compared it to the photos of the original dress in the museum, something began to dawn on me

Comments

[wilhelmina_d]

Fricking brilliant! It makes a lot of sense - and much more closely fits the philosophy of, "yes, this is a WORTH dress, but it's just a business, let's get it churned out".

[janestarz]

So how does this new theory explain your earlier statement:
"or the whole thing was embroidered in one piece, which was impossible because the embroiderers would have needed freakishly long arms. Indian zardozi embroiderers traditionally work at long, narrow frames, and yes, normally you could embroider a large piece by rolling the parts not being worked on over rollers at the edges of the work, but you'd need to roll them very tight to keep the working area taut, and this gorgeous three dimensional goldwork would be crushed by doing that."

Because if the skirt was cut, assembled and then embroidered, wouldn't it still be impossible? Or am I misinterpreting your point?

[peacockdress]

I'm saying that I don't think the embroidery was *that* crushable, so it COULD be rolled at the edge. They weren't treating their embroidery with kid gloves in the way I have been!

[redbraids]

Wow! A fascinating discovery.

[rose_bertin]

Huh! I'm learning so much from this!

[lylassandra]

Could they have done it in one piece, working from the center out?

[peacockdress]

Yes, I think you're right - the pattern is fine at centre front, but veers off course as you work around to the back. I also think they started at the top centre front and worked down, measuring the sizes of the feathers by eye, because they don't grow evenly on the way down to the hem.