The first challenge was to figure out the pearling pattern on the sleeve. This is especially difficult as you really only see the top part of the sleeve. Thankfully, we had a very talented artist (Willelm) who was willing to take on the challenge. It took several days, a lot of erasing, and some imagination - but he was able to come up with a design that looked very close. The design is a repeating pattern centered along the edge of the cuff.

 

The design was done on a regular piece of paper. We had access to an old-fashioned overhead projector, a very nice workspace, and a large roll of plain brown newsprint. The outline of the lower half of the sleeve pattern was enlarged using the projector and traced onto a large sheet of newsprint taped to the wall. The design wasn't as wide as the pattern, but since it was a repeating pattern we just moved the pattern over and repeated as needed.

 

The biggest challenge was figuring out how to get the design transferred to the fabric (a black cotton velvet). After several unsuccessful attempts using modern methods, the frustrated statement was made "They obviously had some way to do this in period, darn it!" So after dashing to the Internet to do some research and running down several clues, some information was found.

 

There is evidence that pattern transfers had been done using a bag made of a loose-weave cloth, filled with chalk. The design was punched out using little holes spaced closely together along the outline of the pattern. This punched pattern was laid over the fabric the design was to be transferred onto, and the chalk bag was pounced over the holes. This forces the chalk through the holes, leaving a dotted outline to follow.  Eureka - we had found our solution!

 

Francesca (Whom most people affectionately call “Lady Mom”) is a long-time quilter - and boy, do quilters have some nifty tools! There is a small, tube-like tool filled with chalk that has a wheel with little teeth at the end. When run over fabric, the tool deposits chalk in a dotted-line pattern. The paper with the traced design was laid over the velvet (velvet side up), and the tool was run over all the lines.