When I saw the picture of this Elizabethan Sweetbag from Fine Arts Museum Boston n.3813.44 I fall in love and decided to try to reproduce it as best as possible using the same tecnique and similar materials.
Here you can see I'm half way on the stitching of the flowers and background; have changed a bit the position of the flowers as this work is inspired to the original one and will not necessary be an absolutely perfect copy concerning the pattern as I'm really much more interested in learning the making process.
The bag is worked on 35ct linen with Pipers silk threads, gold and silver passing on silk for the metal stitches surrounding the flowers and for the braids.
The handle and drawstring will be made in 5 loop square braiding, as in the original. The drawstring ends tassels will be made covering a big wooden oval shaped bead using the Spanish Hitching tecnique which was used at the time to make them. Many interesting informations and tecniques are explained in Carey's book "Sweetbags" that has been fundamental for me in the making up of this project, together with a lot of personal research too.
Still there is a lot of work to do to finish it so...I must go stitching !
