Deconstructing a miniature embroidered broach

Several weeks ago I fell in love with a lovely old broach at a market stall at uni.  So despite the fact that the last thing I should be doing is buying things, it somehow managed to follow me home!  But it had a flaw that irritated me- there was a nasty stain around the edge. It's most noticable near the pink rose but there were a few marks elsewhere.  Close examination showed that it was due to a nasty seeping glue that had discoloured over time.

The broach after I attempted to clean it.  It is about 3 cm in diameter if you are curious.

When I got it home, I tried a few remedies to try and fix it- a gentle wash in warm water with a bit of detergent but no joy.  I then tried getting out the big guns- polar solvents.  This was a big risk- if the colours in the embroidery were not colourfast then I might find them bleeding everywhere and ruining the piece.

While the thread colours happily did not bleed, the stain did not move either.  I suppose I could've left as it was but I decided to take drastic action.  If you have a mint condition broach, I don't recommend the following- this one had already been repaired (the pin on the back was a modern one glued on to replace the original) and had the stain.  But be aware, if you have something with true value DON'T do the following!  I am not an expert- lovers of old things who spend weeks lovingly restoring things would probably be horrified.  I tried to treat the broach with respect but old glues meant that there was a certain lack of finesse in the following.

I decided to see if I could deconstruct the broach to either fix the embroidery if possible, or replace it with something I made myself.  Step one was to pry the backing place (flat metal with the decorative border) off the piece the embroidery was mounted on.  This had been glued down so a certain amount of prying was required.  They came apart fairly easily- the broach pin fell off due to a small amount of flexing, but since this had been glued on much more recently than the rest of the piece I just kept both to glue together again later.

The embroidery was mounted in a metal piece- it's hard to explain well.  The easiest thing is to probably look at the picture below.  An attempt to pry it apart was not successful as it was clear it was going to damage the embroidery so I resorted to using a knife to carefully cut around the fabric.  While this would mean the piece couldn't be remounted in the same broach, I felt it would ultimately cause less damage since it put less stress on the fabric.  Then I could finally separate the broach back- you can see the small dent in back piece.

A part of me wanted to find a signature or a scrap of paper in the back piece. It's a perfect little hollow space that would be awesome to put some tiny message into the future in that may or may not ever be seen again.  Now whether it should've been a posterity message 'this broach made in [insert date here] by me' or something to mess with future person's head 'Now look what you've done!' I'll leave as an interesting thought exercise to the reader.  Sadly there was no identifying marks, either paper or stitched into the border so the creator's identity will forever be a mystery.

Now while this has probably horrified any antique restorer, it has provided a great glimpse into how the piece was made in the first place.  The embroidery was stitched on a piece of off-white silky fabric with a even mesh light chiffon like fabric on top to provide the grid to stitch too.  It also provides a unique chance to see what the original colours are- I was very surprised to see the difference!

Here's what I mean.  Here is a photo of the front of the stitching on a black background.  To provide a colour comparison, I've included three DMC embroidery flosses: 334, 347 and 725 respectively.

And here is the back with the same DMC colours for comparison.

Much brighter, isn't it!  That's the colour that the original embroiderer intended- something bright and cheerful.  As for what I am going to do with a small piece of embroidery and an empty broach, well that's for future blog posts to tell...