It was a long pandemic, and I started doing this project to take advantage of a lot of lockdown time. I had very little experience at embroidering anything beyond counted cross-stitch; counted blackwork seemed like a reasonably simple style for a larger project than I had done previously.
My initial ‘inspiration image’ is Bernardo Luini’s Lady with a Flea Fur, (1520s) depicting a partlet with vertical bands of blackwork embroidery.
I didn’t attempt to develop my own pattern, as the purpose of the project was more about practice, execution, and just plain finishing something than about pattern design. Instead, I selected a worked-out pattern (Oranje – a Spanissheworke Counted Blackwork Design Pattern from Practical Blackwork) for the bars, making a few minor modifications as I went. When I got to the inside neckband, I wanted something slightly different from the main pattern, so I looked to another painting for inspiration, copying the lattice pattern from the inside of the partlet neck in Bronzino’s Lady in Green.
My partlet is made of a plain linen tabby from my stash. Unfortunately, it’s not even close to an even weave and had to be worked over four threads in one direction and three in the other to keep the pattern reasonably square. I used ordinary DMC floss (colour 304):
I chose red rather than black simply because I like red and wear a lot of red, but red is one of the possible colours for partlet embroidery in this period (the most popular being black and gold). My favourite image of a red-embroidered portrait is Palma Vecchio’s La Schiava (1520), which I plan to use as the basis of a future project.
