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The sash that George Washington received from his commanding officer, General Edward Braddock, features several motifs. One of them is a set of ten people. I've gotten to the place where I'm creating that motif, starting at the top of the heads and working down. The motif is worked in a lace pattern. The people are "filled in" stitches, set apart by an openwork design. For those familiar with sprang lace stitches, the openwork is what I call "doubles grid". One row is worked "pick up 2, put 2 down" and the next row is worked in all plain stitches. Another sprang expert, Sylva Cekalova, told me about another approach to sprang lace: work the plait row in single stitches all the way across, and then on the overplait row, reach up to un-do the stitches you need to create the holes. In this manner you are more likely to keep the threads properly separated. Here's a video clip of me working to create the faces, using that approach. The motifs on the Washington-Braddock sash are indeed impressive. Against a background of other sashes of the time, they are, however, less remarkable. Back in 2012 I had the honor of meeting Dutch sprang artist Coby Reijndeers-Baas. She spoke to me of her work restoring sprang sashes, and also about an exhibit of such sashes, the exhibit happening in the 1990s. She gave me the catalogue to that exhibit. The catalogue contains photos of some 47 sashes, most dating to the 1700s. When COVID hit, and my calendar was erased, and I found myself sitting at my kitchen table, wondering what I would do to fill my time .... I decided to address a project that wanted time. Seeing as how time was what I now had ... I pulled out the catalogue that Coby had given me. I went through the images, examining each of the sashes closely, counting holes, and making charts, written patterns for each.
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 Work on the replica sash continues. I just finished the bit that has the date 1709.
What's the deal? Why that number? The story goes that the sash was given to George Washington by his commanding officer the British General Edward Braddock. Yes, in his youth, Washington served as advisor to Braddock, and it was Braddock who gave Washington this sash. The story continues that the sash probably belonged to General Braddock's father ... also named Edward Braddock, and who also served in the British Army. It seems that Edward Braddock Senior received his military commission in 1709, the date on the sash. The sash was passed from father to son, and from the son to George Washington. My story is that it was 2009 when I came to be interested in the sash. I was looking for images to put in my book Sprang Unsprung. I wanted pieces of sprang that would be of interest to North Americans. Hearing that George Washington had such a sash .... there's a photo in the back of Peter Collingwood's book ... I decided to try to get permission to put such a photo in my book. Come to find out, George Washington had more than one sprang sash. The thing is, when I received the photo from George Washington's Mount Vernon, and saw the date 1709, and reflecting that this was 2009, chills ran up and down my spine. I knew this was something I just had to pursue. More on the subject of this story later.
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