Tour in Lesage embroidery was such an honor for us. It was its first time to the public tour, showing its workroom, its craftsmen, its embroidery samples, and its in progressed Chanel embroideries of Resort 2012 collection. Photos were forbidden in its workroom but everything I saw have already imprinted in my mind.
Craftsmen in Lesage were using some special needles with hook to pull threads with beads from the wrong side of the fabric. They either beaded onto a sheer fabric, such as silk chiffon or light weight muslin, and cut the embroidery pieces out, or beaded directly onto garments. They worked really fast but still took them three to four days to finish one embroidery piece.
Before beading, they used tracing machine to trace patterns and designs onto fabric as preparation. I have never seen such a tracing machine and how it works. Other than this, the embroidery patterns were pretty impressive as well. In each pattern, there were specific numbers and dots in different colors to indicate different beads or threads. I have to admit that this was a tough work. You have to work with both your eyes and hands and your brain. Also, it was such a painful work for your eyes. Sometimes after long time hand sewing, my eyes felt so dry and sour. Even I felt my eyesight was blur sometime.
The sample room was pretty amazing. I couldn't believe we have been to the biggest hand embroidery sample room in the world! I couldn't believe we have seen such beautiful artworks from the 1920's. Without this trip, I have to say there was no way we can see those real stuff closely with our eyes. We couldn't touch them but we can feel them and admire them!
To be honest, I really wanted to settle down and learn hand embroidery for like a month or several months. I love sewing and hand sewing. And I really really want to get away from machines,put on my ipod, sitting down in a tiny room without air conditioning, and then start hand embroidering. Lesage, I will see you next year!?
Another amazing hand working was from Leather School of Florence. It located in the one side of Santa Croce of Florence. In such a tiny part of the church, they have one floor of workroom and the other floor of school courses.
She was introducing different tools, modes, and the whole workshop.
He was making customized handbag out of patterns.
This was a 80% finished goat skin handbag designed by their customer.
Watching her making this creative handbag was amazing! She used a whole skin of a crocodile to make a purse. She told us she always improvising and designing handbags when she got the animal skin. No design illustration, and no patterns. Also, she was demonstrating how to hand stitch with a specialized waxing linen thread for all the closures of the handbag. Other than those, she added Chinese minority accessory as the decoration and handle of the bag. It was quite an experience for me! I have never seen such hand made leather bags, nor have I never seen such amazing unique design.
On the first floor was their leather school, in which there were approximately 15 creative students making their own handbags. Although most of students' work were going to be thrown away at the end, they have their own space to create whatever they like and what they wanted to make. One of their instructors showed us different animal skins, such as crocodile, lamb, goat, and deer skin, etc. Through touching them we got the idea of different textures of different skins as well as how to differentiate real leather from synthetic leather.
I didn't buy any leather jacket in Florence since I was not sure the ones in the flea market were made of real leather. After learning leather information from the leather school, I got some basic ideas of different leather textures but still was not hundred percent sure with my own feeling. Instead of waste money, I'd rather not buying anything insecure.
Here is the video I taped in the leather school.
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