Roc's Nest

gold thread embroidery sampler

2011-12-24T15:59:00.000-08:00

I have been taking an online class on gold thread embroidery for the last couple years. Tonight I have finished the sampler that was the main part of the class. I will admit the class ended a few months ago, but I am pretty happy with getting it done this quickly.

There are about 26 different gold thread patterns in the sampler. The colored parts are mostly done in queen stitch.

I also finished another piece of lace for the Elizabethan smock. I have been on a kick for finishing up projects the last couple of weeks. Sometimes I get slightly overwhelmed by the sheer number of unfinished projects I have kicking around. There are so many other projects that I want to start, but I feel that I need to finish some once in a while. I am likely to start a project on the spur of the moment. I also am not afraid to start projects that I expect to take years to finish. So many people these days want something they can finish in one weekend. While that kind of project can be satisfying in a way, I really get a charge out of finishing something that has taken me months or years to complete.

Anyway to get back to the current state. The latest piece of lace is from Onder le Loep. I especially liked it because the pattern is very reminiscent of the kind used in the original smock.

So now I have to decide how close to finished I am. I could either do 3 more pieces like this one and then call the lace done, and start assembly, or I could do those 3 pieces and 3 more complex. The real question is how close to the original do I want to get. The collar of the 16th C smock is much more ornate than the lace I have made for it. My orginal plan was to make another piece and attach it to the points I alreay made. But... I will admit to getting a little tired of this project. I am getting to the point where I really want to be done with it. Adding those 3 more complex pieces with probably add another year to the project. I am going to make a small trial piece to see how difficult the new pieces would be. The have tallies in them. Up to this point I have been avoiding tallies. I have heard that they are the real test of a lace maker, and that makes me apprehensive. I will try the sample and then make a decision. This is piece number 34 for the A&S challenge.

Scroll #37

2011-11-19T08:43:00.000-08:00

I was recently given the opportunity to make a scroll for a dear friend of mine. She was being awarded a court baroncy for service to the current reign, and many previous reigns. It seemed to me to be the best bet to make a Book of Kells stule scroll. This piece took quite a bit of time. There is a great deal of very tiny details which are not very visible in this picture. This was also the first time I attempted to use watercolor as a wash over the goauche I usually use. In the Book of Kells there are indications that they used a wash of tranperant color over a more matte color. Some of the pages of the original book have water damage which shows how the wash was applied. I was extremely happy to be given the priviledge to make this piece.

Lace update

2011-06-07T05:03:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I last posted my progress on the bobbin lace for the 16th C smock. I have just finished the longest piece, the one which will go around the collar. At this point I have 11 pieces done out of the 20 that the project needs.

When I finished the 2 pieces which will run down the top of the arms, I determined I did not like that pattern all that much and wanted to do something else for the other pieces on the arms. The second and third pieces from the top are the ones that will go on the top of the arms. I decided to try making a piece of lace directly from one of the patterns in Le Pompe, the pattern book drawn in the 16th century. This is my first attempt at doing something that did not have a modern interpretation of the pattern. you can just see the pattern from the book under the threads. The piece on the left that is loose was my first attempt. I decided quite quickly that the threads were too thin. They were 90/2. The second piece uses 60/2 thread, which I think looks much better. The first one just looked too spidery and light. I am a little worried about how a piece of lace using such coarse thread will look next to the other pieces I have made for this project. They all use considerably finer thread.

Now I have also found a new book; Seventeenth Century Women's Dress Patterns by Susan North and Jenny Tiramani. This book shows the bobbinlace from the original smock that I am trying to replicate in much higher magnification. They also have patterns for the bobbinlace. Though they are fairly simplistic. The one I looked at in detail did not seem to have quite enough lines to show the paths of all the bobbins, but I have not tried it yet so I may be wrong. Anyway, I should be able to replicate the pattern for the pieces of lace they have on the arms. I am very excited about this. I have been trying to find a pattern which had a similar overall appearance. Now I will be able to replicate the original much more accurately. The book also shows a pattern for the smock itself. I had not even started to think about how I was going to put this all together yet. The smock they show is the one which is also in Janet ARnold's book that has a chevron pattern on bobbinlace. When I started this project, I decided I wanted to make a smock with teh bobbinlace applied in a straight instead of slanted pattern. It is more a combination of the two laced smocks in Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion 4 on page 60. Now with the combination of the two books, it has become much easier.

Greenland dress: first trial

2011-03-31T17:57:00.000-07:00

Way back in October of 2009 I wrote about a dress from Herjolfnes that I want to try recreating. the dress is not in great condition and a fair amount of guesswork is going to be necessary. the original picture shows the pleats on the front extending down well past the waist, but the fragment from the chest does not go that far. There is a second piece which looks to be a part of a skirt with pleats. the upper edge perpendicular to the pleats has remains of a seam. I surmise that the bodice and skirt were made separately then, and sew together at the waist. the bodice is V necked with small gores under the arms which are also pleated. the back of the gown shows no pleating.

I attempted to make a couple of pleats to see how they were constructed. the original archeologists remark that the pleats are sew together on the back but otherwise not supported with any other stitches. The upper row of pleats is about 10 mm deep, while the lower row is only 5 mm deep. the pleats on the original gown were about 4 mm. The shear amount of fabric that will be needed to achieve a panel wide enough to cover my chest is going to be prodigious. I am not sure at this point how to adjust the cut of the fabric to take into consideration all the pleats.

Next step: Trying to cut a neckline which will become the shape of the gown when the pleating is completed.

bunch o' scrolls

2011-03-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

I have been very very bad lately. I have done 3 scrolls lately, and have forgotten to take pictures of any of them. One of them went to a friend so I can go back and get a picture of that one, but the others went.....away. I am not really upset about not archiving them, but really should get better about it. I might want to look back at some point, and if I have not taken pictures I will not be able to. Anyway those were #31, 32 and 33 for the A&S 50 challenge. At least I think they are. I suffered a massive computer meltdown fairly recently, and I had to rebuild my A&S list. I keep track of all the A&S projects I am working on and when I get finished with the various parts of them. For example, I am working on an Elizabethan smock that needs something like 20 pieces of lace incorporated into it. As I finish each piece of lace I record it on the A&S list. That way when I am done, I will know how long the entire project took and how long the individual pieces of lace took to make. So there it is. A very short post with no pictures. I will have to do better next time. I should get the pictures of the trials of wool pleats for the iceland dress up, and I have finished more pieces of lace for the smock. I have been very lazy about updating my blog.

Apprentices

2011-02-25T12:39:00.000-08:00

So I now have an apprentice. What shall I do to...I mean with her? Really she is pretty driven anyway so keeping her nose to the grindstone is not going to be an issue. She also has projects galore, so giving her projects seems like a waste of time. This is my first one of these so I am still not totally locked into how I want to run my end of this relationship.

She just finished running K&Q A&S championships so making her get more involved in A&S competitions just seems silly. She is also the current champion of archery in our barony. Hmm....period archery shoots? She does have to run our championships this year. Am I even planning on asking her to do specific things?

Keeping her focused on one thing so far has been the theme of our working relationship. She does get a bit distrac.......oh shiney. Oh wait, that is me, not her. Currently she has been working on netting, and been doing it for quite a while with some nice headway.

Oh yeah, she is about 8 months pregnant. Period birth....ooh ick...no. Lets stick with the modern age for anything to do with medical baby issues. I am actually looking forward to making adorable cute little clothing. Wait, here I am doing stuff for her. Isn't she supposed to be doing stuff for me. No, that is not too likely to happen much with any apprentices I take. I view the apprentice-laurel relationship as more a guiding hand on my part, not the dictatorial despot (aww shucks)

I am fairly firm about wanting to do things in a "period" manner, but again she is already leaning (or frolicing gaily) in that direction. If she cannot find instructions in a book contemporary to the age, then she is not happy. That is actually ahead of me, but then I do lace and embroidery, neither of which seem to have much in the way of instructions, just patterns. She is more into making gun powder, fingerloop cords and netting.

I am really glad she "gets it" when it comes to the authenticity side of the hobby. One of the hardest things is to instill a love for doing things the old fashioned way in people in our society. For some reason some people (often the most outspoken) seem to take any discussion of authenticity as a direct attack against them. I have never really understood why you would join a medieval recreation group if you did not want to do medieval recreation.

So if she is already interested in authenticity, and talented, and fairly firm in her likes, what is my job here? Hmm. I might have to think on this a bit. Low maintenance apprentices, just what I was aiming for. This might be easier than I thought. All I have to do is walk around saying "Yup, thats my apprentice" like the proud mama.

Go Alys.

Dyeing from natural materials

2010-12-27T17:50:00.001-08:00

While looking through my camera today, I found a set of photos from our last dyeing day. A groups of 4 people came over to my house and we went for a walk at a local farm to collect dyeing materials. The first picture shows some of the dyeing pots as we started. The top row from left to right is sheep mullien, goldenrod and birch bark. The bottom row (L to R) is onion skins, cochineal, and queen Anne's lace. The only dye in this picture with was not collected locally was the cochineal. We also had an indigo bath which we were playing with.

The next picture shows the preparation of the black walnut husks and madder root. The madder was a three year old plant I had in my garden. The black walnuts were taken apart and we used the husks and shells separately. The husks produced only a dark beige, but the shells created a lovely dark chocolate brown.

The next picture shows the range of colors we got from the different dyes. The reds were made from the madder roots, birch bark and the cochineal. The browns came from the black walnuts. The yellows from the goldenrod and the queen anne's lace, and the blues from the indigo.

The final picture is a close up of the blues. the two furthest to the right were both done with just indigo. the others were all overdyes with either yellows or beiges from other dyes pots. We got quite a range of teals. Interestingly, teal is the one color that people had told me would be hard to get when using natural dyes.

We really got a great batch of colors out of this set of dyes. Next year I want to put more madder in and try some weld and woad.

Baroness' scroll

2010-09-22T04:56:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a trip to Quebec. I went up for the Barony of Havre de Glaces investiture. I made a scroll for the incoming baroness. since we were in Quebec, I asked the incoming Baron to traslate it into French for me. Unfortunately I am not conversant in that language. The scroll itself is based on a 16th C Persian piece. I used a pseudo-Farsi calligraphy to stay within the feel of the original piece while still being able to read it. I did this once before for my daughters AOA, but in that instance I wrote from right to left to make it look a little more exotic. This time I decided I had better stick with left to right since I was copying a language with which I am not that familiar. I figured it would be hard enough to write the French without doing it backwards also. The gold work is done with Schminke's guoache. This scroll is mainly about the legal wording so I kept the ornamentation to a minimum. The wording was taken from a 16th C English charter for a burgess. I did shorten the wording quite a bit. It was incredibly long. It still came out sounding pretty long in court. I did leave some of the more amusing archaic references. For example she was given permission to chose a catchpole and "taster of ale" and present them at court. There were a couple of volunteers in the audience for the ale tasting.

This is scroll #31 for the A&S 50 challenge. Only 19 left to go, and still 5 years. I think I am going to make it on this challenge. I did slow down quite a bit over the last year, but I also still have a lot of time.

Investiture Gown

2010-08-19T17:23:00.000-07:00

I finished the investiture gown in Late May. I patterned the dress on a couple of gown shown in the book "The Picorial Arts of the West" by C.R Dodwell. There are a few pictures which show an over gown which has embroidery around the bottom hem which is protected by the undergown extending to the ground.

The embroidery around the collar, cuffs and bottom edge is mainly reverse chain stitch. the small diamonds are bayeoux stitch surrounded by outline stitch. The celtic dog on the front of the bottom is completely filled with chain stitch. The thread was wool and the dress is linen. It took a long time but I am very happy with the results.

Finished Coronet

2010-06-22T15:17:00.000-07:00

Well my investiture is now over, and I can get around to updating my blog. The making of the coronet hit a couple of bumps which took a bit to overcome. Initially I cut all the pieces out of the brass. That was about as far as I could go by myself. I turned to Ygraine of Kellswood and Anton LaFlamme de Saint Aubin for help. Most of the rest of the work was completed by them, and I was given pictures of it as them moved through the steps of assembly. Next they joined the front piece to the back. Ygraine and I had tried to blacken the back piece, but unfortunately the black finish was not stable, and rubbed off easily. The resultant flat piece didn't look anything like I was expecting. At this point I was really getting worried that it was never going to be done on time, and I was really worried about what it was going to look like in the end. The next report I got on the progress of the coronet had it now connected to become a circle. They had put a small tub of brass along the top and bottom edges to hold the two halves together. I was beginning to be a little more hopeful about it at this point. At least it looked like a coronet now. There was still the area between the original panels that needed something to cover the joints, and obviously the color was not quite what we were hoping for. The next picture I saw of it showed it with the final piece of tube added across the joints and the pins on the top to hold the beads. It then went off with Anton to be polished. the next time I saw it, Ygraine and I put the smokey quartz beads on the top and it was as ready as it was going to be for the investiture. As you can see the coronet really came out looking quite good in the end. We may go back and try to get some sort of blackening in the background still. The beads are not put on permanently yet, but I don't expect that part to be too hard. Anton thinks we will have an easier time working on the second coronet. I only need one for now, but eventually the Barony will have both a baron and baroness and will need both coronets. The part that really surprised me is how comfortable the coronet is. I wore it all day in the hot sun and never got a headache, though I did get quite a sunburn on the part in my hair. I will have to remember to put sunblock on it in the future. I would never had gotten this far without Anton and Ygraine helping me, and I owe them a real dept of gratitude.

More lace finally

2010-05-23T15:24:00.000-07:00

I finally finished the next piece of lace for the Elizabethan Smock. This one took a long time to complete. It was 18 inches long and used 52 bobbins. While this is not a huge number, it is the most I have used so far.

The piece in the middle is the new one. This picture shows all the pieces I have completed so far. That is 6 out of 19. This is going to take me years to finish. Some of the pieces which I still have to do are quite small and will not take long, but there is also at least one more piece like the one I just finished. The original is on page 60 of Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion IV. I have made a major change in the pattern. There are 2 smocks in this book. One has straight inserts of needlelace and the other has diagonal inserts of bobbinlace. I decided I liked the look of the straight inserts, but wanted to do them in bobbinlace. The two garments are so closely related, I feel secure in making that change. I have tried to stay with the same general type of lace patterns. The pictures of the lace in the book are not quite close enough for me to try to do a replication of the actual patterns of the original smock. anyway, 6 down 13 to go.

Sile AOA

2010-05-18T19:28:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I have last posted. I have been working hard on a couple of fairly long projects. In the mean time I finished another scroll. this is an AOA for Sile Bowie. I especially liked the fine detail in the original from the Hours of Katherine of Cleves. It is not easy to see in this picture, but there is shading on the individual flowers and leaves.

Test of scroll saw

2010-02-27T13:06:00.000-08:00

I have not done any work on the coronet since before Christmas. Since I am beginning to get worried about finishing them before June, I thought it was about time I got back to work. My eldest son got a scroll saw for his birthday last November. I decided I would try to do the cut out work on it to try and speed up the metal work. Now I have never used a scroll saw, so I was a little "out to sea" when it came to what kind of blades I needed or how this would work. Anyway, I found some information on line on the Olsen saw blade site that seemed to imply it would not be a problem to use the scroll saw on non-ferrous metal. I ordered a set of blades (size 2/0 and 2). I got blades without pegs because they came much smaller and I was worried about the tiny points in my pattern. My son then told me his saw only took blades that had a pin. ok, I ordered another set with pins. They were much bigger, and I was unsure about whether I would be able to make the sharper corners. since he owned the saw, I thought I would invite him along for the trial run. As we were looking through the instruction manual, I noticed it said this brand of saw could be used with blades that had pins, but also blades without them. Yay! Now I could use the much smaller blades.

I started by covering the sheet of 22 gauge brass with masking tape and drawing the pattern on that. Then I had to drill some holes in the metal to get access for the blade in the closed patterns. The center of the pattern had a small hole, and I thought I could drill that without making a starter hole and cutting around the hole. Well, as it turns out, I couldn't. The drill badly distorted the metal around the hole and left a couple large shards of metal sticking out. I tried to flatten out the distortion a bit with a hammer so it would not scratch the table of the scroll saw. You can see a couple of the hammer marks. I made the rest of the holes with a much smaller drill bit, and there was very little distortion, all of which was cut off. The top picture shows the cut out piece with the masking tape still attached. The lower picture has the tape removed. These have not been filed or sanded to remove the sharp edges yet. However, I am happy withe the way it came out. I did break 5 saw blades. According to one youtube video I was watching breaking lots of blades while cutting metal is inevitable so I am not going to worry about it. I do have to buy more blades though before I start on the big piece. this is only one repeat of the pattern. There are 6 on the final coronet. So 5 broken blades times 6 repeats. I could break as many as 30 blades if I stay like this. It is exciting to see it working out though.

More laurel thoughts

2010-02-08T12:55:00.000-08:00

Well, I am surprised by the number of people who actually read my blog. I have gotten some responses to the message I posted a couple days ago. I have been thinking a lot about what I am going to do now. I think I have determined that I am both a goal oriented person and somewhat competitive (stop laughing). I was viewing the Laurel as a goal without really looked past it. I had never thought about what I would do with it. I know it frightened me a bit to get placed into something I had not really thought through. I thought I had time. I am not going to jump into anything new now until I see how the land lays. I am still really hazy on what Laurels do that is different from what I have been doing anyway. Generally I am feeling much better about the whole thing. I am actually kind of excited about it now. Yeah, it has taken me almost a month to accept that it really happened and stop sweating about it.

I can still find smaller goals, like the A&S display at Pennsic, K&Q A&S championships and Athena's Thimble categories. I still want to increase my level in some of the embroidery categories. Sometimes it is hard to come up with projects which are useful to my personna. I suppose it is not critical that I can use the items. I can always give them to people that can.

One thing this will do is give me the incentive to upgrade my wardrobe. I have a few pieces that are pretty loose in their interpretations of anything anybody would have ever worn anywhere. So clothing laurels need to look the part. That means I need to get some new fabric and make more clothes, right? Any excuse to buy more fabric and make clothes, and this is even kind of legitimate. Now if I could just find a loose gown from the 16th C that is cut low enough in the front to show the lace smock I am making. I am getting a little lazy about the whole corset thing, but really love the late period accessories. I can also get to work on that swedish gown, and the wool pleated gown from Herjolfnes. Oh yeah, lots to do.

Anglo dress embroidery

2010-02-07T08:39:00.000-08:00

I have finished the embroidery for the hem of the 12th C dress that I am planning of wearing at my investiture. It is official now. I was called up in front of the current king to be told that I had won the election and will be invested as teh Baroness of Smoking rocks. therefore I have a few projects that need to be finished up before June. The event we hold then, Vinland Raids, will be our investiture. One of the things I want to finish is a 12th C gown in the style of one shown in the Prufening Miscellany or the stained glass Crucifixion window at Poitiers Cathedral. In both of these cases the outer gown is shorter than the under gown. This allows embroidery on the hem edge of the outer gown to be protected from the ground. In the picture the 2 pieces of embroidery are hanging donw the back of a door. The front piece has the celtic dog in the middle. The pictures show the neck opening to be surrounded by embroidery also. That is the next step.

The other main thing I need to get finished before June is the coronet. I have not done anything on it for quite a while.

I also have finished another piece of lace for the elizabethan smock. This is one of the pieces that line the edges of the cuff openings. There will be 4 of them all together. They are quite easy to make compared to some of the others I am making for this smock. With this one I have finished 5 of the 20 needed to complete the smock. That seems like it should be 1/4 of the way done, but I have been finishing the easier ones first. There are still some really long pieces for the top of the sleeves.

Laurel Vigil

2010-02-06T16:40:00.000-08:00

This is going to be a hard post for me. At East Kingdom 12th night I was elevated to the Order of the Laurel, the highest Arts and Sciences award in the SCA. I do not especially feel like I was ready for this, but one does not argue with the royalty. Apparently, the other members of the order thought I was ready. This makes me wonder if I am going to expect too much from other people. I feel almost as if the bar is too low if I made it in with the level of work I was doing. I was just getting to the point where I could make the accessories that are so important in the clothing I want to specialize in. I have been learning what kinds of embroidery and lace is appropriate for the time and nationalities I am interested in. Only now could I start the projects that I was hoping would start my journey towards the laurel. I feel somewhat let down. I feel like the wind has been taken out of my sails. I have not slowed down at all in the plans and work I have been doing. After all, I wanted to make the lace and embroidery and clothing because I like it, not because it was the way to get to the laurel. It just seems like what I was viewing as a treat sometime in the future has been spent. I guess I really never wanted to actually get there: just keep trying. Now what?

Anyway, the ceremony itself was magnificent. The amount of work and effort that my friends put into it was awe inspiring. I can never thank the people involved enough. God, I hope I remembered to thank them at all. My mantle was worked on by 22 different people in my Barony. Twenty-four people traveled for 4 hours just to be there with me, and that was only the number of people in the barony. There were many other people who also came. I did not cry during the ceremony, but I am getting misty now thinking about it. The memories are kind of sporatic. I can remember some things so well, and others not at all. There were so many gifts and well wishes and hugs it was just great. My heart swells just hinking about it.

I cannot thank everyone enough for this honor.

Smock Lace

2010-01-09T10:16:00.000-08:00

This is just going to be a quick update. I have finished the forth piece of lace for the Elizabethan Smock. Four down, fifteen left to go. This is going to take a long time. The other problem is that the pictured smock both have one a couple patterns of lace in all the pieces inset into the bodice. I really don't want to make the same pattern over and over again, so I am going to introduce a couple other patterns. I believe I will make all the pieces for the sleeves with the same pattern. The two pieces on the outside will be around the cuffs, and the ones on the inside are placed along side the front opening. Next I want to start on the main pieces in the sleeves. There are six strips of lace on the sleeves. One long piece running down the top of the arm and smaller pieces on the front and back. At this point I plan on making the sleeves inserts all the same pattern, but they are also the longest. I may become bored with one pattern all that time, and make the smaller pieces something else. We will see how it goes.

Embroidered Celtic Dog Panel

2009-12-28T19:48:00.000-08:00

I Have been working fairly consistantly on the Celtic dog panel. I am hoping to have a gown finished by June with hand embroidered trim around the bottom edge, sleeve ends and collar. This was probably the hardest piece. The front bottom edge of the gown. This is going to be a 12th C gown done in a style popular in Western Europe from the 9th C to at least the 12th C. Examples of this style of gowns are shown in pictures from Germany and France. The outer gown is slightly shorter than the under gown. Therefore the edge of the out gown is protected from the dirt on the ground. This enabled the wearers to have a nicely embroidered pattern around the bottom edge without worry about it being ruined by coming in contact with the ground. The dog is a bit dark for the background. I attempted to alleviate some of that unbalanced look by adding the diamonds to add a little weight to the rest of the pattern. The main patterns I see in the 12th C pictures are geometric therefore I made the background part entirely geometric. The back panel of the bottom edge will have the geometric pattern without the dog as a central focus. Often the person shown in the pictures are wearing a mantle over their gown so it is hard to see the neck opening. On the few that you can see the pattern on the bottom edge and neck opening are not the same. In keeping with the style I will make the neck opening a different pattern. I have not yet designed that pattern. It seems to be going fairly quickly though and I have a fairly good chance to have this gown done by June.

2009-11-29T16:25:00.000-08:00

I have one more scroll finished. This one was a maunche for my apprentice sister. The image sitting in the capital letter is finishing the painting even as it is being given out. My apprentice sister is very good at calligraphy, and jsut getting started with illumination. I thought this would make an especially fitting image for her scroll. This scroll is number 26 for the A&S 50 challenge.

2009-11-29T12:31:00.000-08:00

There are a couple of things which I have not recorded since I have not written in a while. First the Elizabethan smock I am making is based on one pictured in Janet Arnold's Pattern's of Fashion 4. There are 2 smocks, one with bobbinlace inserts and one with reticella inserts. I liked the pattern of the second smock, but prefer to make bobbinlace. Therefore, I combined the 2 and am making a smock with bobbinlace. To make a representation of the piece in the book I will have to make 19 separated pieces of lace. So far I have finished 2 and am partway through a third. The 2 finished ones are the same pattern, and I posted a picture of one on Sept 2. The latest piece is the first time I have tried lace with points. I still have 2 inches left to finish, then I will clip the threads. I am pleased with the way this piece is coming out.

From the other extreme end of the time frame of the SCA, I just finished a embroidered celtic dog. I have been working on this piece for years. It is not that it is difficult. It is more that I just found that this style is not my favorite, and I kept putting it down for years. This is going to be incorporated into an emboidered band on the bottom edge of a tunic gown. I will surround it with a geometric pattern which will work up quicker than this part did.

2009-10-10T17:08:00.001-07:00

I got a copy of the scroll that I made at Pennsic last year. It was number 24. This one was based on one of the Catherine of Cleves illuminations.

Medallions are done

2009-10-03T17:05:00.000-07:00

I went up to Carolingia today to finish the medallions for the coronets. I put another 2 layers of color on most of them. There were a couple of leaves which I thought looked dark enough without any more green on them so I put clear on those instead. I am very happy with the way they came out. For the first time I had tried enameling I think they look pretty good. I might have moved the leaves around a bit if I had it to do over, but they are going to have to do.

We also spent some time playing with some plating solutions to see if we could coat brass with either silver or gold-tone. The coronet I had envisioned had a gold cutout pattern over a blackened background. You can see in the picture that the sample piece of brass we had definitely turned silver on the left side where we treated it with the silver plating liquid. It is a bit harder to see that the band in the middle is really black. The light is reflecting off it oddly. Over on the right side we dipped it into the gold-tone plating liquid. since the brass is already a gold color it is hard to see the difference. however after the first dip it looked much shinier on that end. After a second dip the gold tone got darker. It might have started to look a little coppery. It was hard to tell on the limited sample.

Greenland Gown

2009-10-01T16:16:00.000-07:00

I have had the opportunity to look at the book "Buried Norsemen at Herjolfsnes" written by Poul Norlund in 1924. I also have "Woven into the Earth" by Else Ostergard checked out of the library at the same time. Both of these books are essentially about the same archeological digs on Greenland. There was a settlement of Norsemen on the island sometime during the 11th through 14th centuries. The exact reason the settlement was abandoned is unknown. However, since it was abandoned the remains were not disturbed much until the 19th century. One of the earliest explorations of the area was done in 1921 and then written about by Poul Norlund. The second book WITE is then written about pieces from the original dig and subsequent textile finds. It is fascinating to see the difference between the two. Dr. Norlund saw the large pieces as they were removed from the graves. Unfortunately many of the pieces were considered too damaged to be conserved.

I have decided to try to make a replica of one of the pieces that I am fascinated by. It was not in the best of shape, and only about 1/3 of the dress was saved. The following picture is a sketch from Dr. Norlund's book. He found this dress used as a shroud on a small woman. unlike many of the other shrouds the corpses arms were put into the sleeves and crossed across her chest. A picture Dr. Norlund took of the gown as they pulled it out of the ground is published in WITE. That picture is still under copywrite so I cannot publish it here. The gown had a deep V neck and vertical pleats running down past the waist. The pleats start at the bottom of the V neck, and cover the entire front and sides of the gown. Since he mentions the arm holes are cut deep in the front, but are almost straight down in the back. Most of the other clothes isolated at this site had side gore which form the lower edge of the arm hole and extend to the bottom edge. while he does not say there were underarm gores on this gown he does say "the number of seams in the bottom part fit well with the other garments". From that statement I am going to assume the gown had gores which made up the lower edge of the sleeve hole. His comment that the pleats extended on the sides leads me to believe that the front and gores under the arms were all pleated. It will be entirely conjecture on what the bottom half of the gown looks like since their was no report on it. There is a Swedish gown from the 16th century which is pictured repeatedly. Margareta Leijonhufvud wears a pleated gown in her portrait. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Margareta_Leijonhufvud.jpg

While there is no real reason to think that the style of the 16th C gown could be in any way an evolutionary result of the earlier piece from the other side of the Atlantic, I need to base the lower half of the gown on something. At least both of these pieces are used by Scandinavians. It is possible that pleats were a reoccuring theme throughout the scandinavian's history. I will have to look into this a lot more before I can make any generalizations.

The first thinkg I need to do is find some fairly light weight wool in brown or black. T original piece was black warp and brown weft. I don't think I will be lucky enough to find that color combination. I am going to use the pattern of the Herjolfsnes piece #39. The lower pattern is #39. It is essentially 2 gores on the side and single gores in the front and back. I will have to make a sample to see how much the pleats will increase the width of the fabric that will be needed.

Another project to start. I need to get a couple other things off the table before I get started on this one, but I can start looking for the fabric now.

Pelican Scroll

2009-10-01T16:11:00.001-07:00

I finished another scroll for the A&S 50 challenge. This one is a Pelican . It is number #25. That puts me half was through the scribal part of my challenge.

2009-09-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

I finished another day of working on the medallions for the coronets. Today I started putting the color on. Black for the whales and green for the leaves. The first picture is of the medallion with a coat of glass particles on it. there is white covering everything except the whale. In the second picture you can see the same medallion after it has been fired. If you look really closely you can see some spots of white that have bubbled up from underneath in the whale. that should get covered by subsequent layers of glass.

In the next two pictures you can see the green going into the leaves. At this point you are seeing the medallion after we had spent a fair amount of time with a tiny paint brush getting all the green out of the white. To get the glass onto the medallion I put a couple drops of water on the surface of the piece and then floated clumps of damp glass particles into the water. It spreads our quite nicely, but sometimes it slops over the walls of the wires. then the small amount of glass particles have to be removed. I have to go back and put one more layer of colored glass. Then we will grind the surface and put a couple layers of clear glass on top of the while thing. So far I am pleased with the way things are going.

enameling

2009-09-13T19:30:00.000-07:00

A totally new project for me. You may be thinking that I am never going to finish any of the projects I already have going, but I assure you some of them may get done eventually. Anyway, our barony is going to have elections soon for a new baron and/or baroness. We have been working for the last 5 years without baronial coronets which can be passed down with the office. The current Baron and Baroness own their coronets. We needed to have a symbol of our barony which would outlast any specific officeholder. So I volunteered to make enameled medallions for the front of two coronets. I started working on them yesterday.

My laurel Ygraine, has been doing enamelling for quite a while now, and she does awesome work so I am leaning quite heavily on her tutelage. I spent about 4 hours working on the medallions yesterday which was just long enough to learn two things: 1. that I do not want to make a living making these things; 2. Ygraine has a great deal of patience. I suppose I also learned quite a bit about how to actually make a cloisonned piece of enameling.

We started by cleaning 3 small domed copper circles. then we applied some sticky stuff I cannot remember the name off to the back. After sifting some black powdered glass onto it, we turned them over and put some white on the front. The front did not need the sticky stuff since it was not going to be upside down. This is a picture of the copper discs with the powdered glass on them. They have not gone into the kiln yet. They only stay in the kiln for 2 minutes, during which time I was constantly keeping an eye on the temperature and adjusting the opening of the door to keep it steady.

This next picture shows the discs after they came out of the kiln. You can see the disc on the left is still hot. That gives it that brownish color. We let them cool down for a while. I don't quite remember how long, but then we get to talking anyway so it might have been a little longer than necessary. They were given 2 coats of white on the top.

Next I started to bend the little wire pieces which will keep the colors from mixing together on the final piece. Here is a picture of the disc after I have placed all the wires on it. There was probably about 1 and 1/2 hours between these two pictures. Bending all those little tiny leaves took quite a while. I believe I might have said some naughty words near the ends as yet another leave escaped from me to bounce around on the floor, or disappear in my lap. In the end I made 30 little tiny leaves. The heraldry of our barony is now visible on the front. A sperm whale surrounded by a laurel wreath. Oh yeah, that third copper disc we cleaned at the beginning was used at this point to press down on the top and make the wires of the whale conform to the shape of the dome.

Then I very carefully carried them back down stairs to put on one more coat of clear glass to hold all those little wires in place. I really breathed a sigh of relief (or releaf, ha ha) when they were all fastened down.

I am going to go back next week and start applying the colors. Eventually the wires will only be visible as tiny silver lines between the various colors. The whale will be black, the leaves green and the background white. I hope to get most of it done next week.

2009-09-02T12:42:00.000-07:00

In keeping with my new style of posting, I will give you a quick synopsis of the state of various embroidery projects at the moment. The glove project is not moving along very quickly. I started doing one of the flowers, but I am not totally thrilled with the way it is coming out so far, so I am thinking about it for a while before I move on.

Another embroidery project I have been working on for a while, but have not yet mentioned is an Elizabethan forehead cloth. Following my volunteer work on the Plimouth Plantation embroidered jacket project, I decided I needed to make something of my own with that style of embroidery. Thanks to a high resolution photo from the Victoria and Albert Museum, I have a nice set of close up photos of a man's sleeping cap. I designed a forehead cloth using a variety of the flowers from the cap. I am using the gilt sylke twist thread that Plimouth Plantation had commisioned from a source in England. After they were sure they had enough thread to finish their jacket, they put the extra up for sale. I now believe they even have colors for sale that were not used in the jacket. From which I assume the source in England has found production of a kind of thread that has not been available for decades to be lucrative. I love that kind of story. Anyway it has given me the opportunity to use materials which are closer to the original than has been previously available. The pattern is still pretty empty, but getting there slowly.

The picture to the right is a close up of the center flower. there are also 4 white strawberry flowers which are very hard to see in the large picture.

I have also been playing with the size of the thread in a lace pattern I have been working with. when I finished the table runner a couple of months ago, one of the things I was not very happy with was the size of the threads I had used in the bobbinlace inserts. I want to make a smock with lace inserts similar to one pictured in Janet Arnold's latest book. The smock contained multiple different bobbinlace patterns, one of which is quite similar in feel to the pattern I used in the table runner. I wanted to use the same pattern, but use a different size thread. The thread in the original was 60/2 linen. I made 2 samples with 80/2 and 90/2. The lace on the left has the smaller sized thread, and I find it to be a little too fine for the piece. It is not really that easy to see in the picture, but the plaits just feel too thin to me. For the 50 challenge these are lace pieces #20 & #21.

Pennsic Scroll

2009-08-10T08:21:00.000-07:00

Well, I did it this time. I had a scroll due at the middle weekend of Pennsic. It really was a comedy of errors. I figured I would ahve plenty of time to finish it after I got there. The weeks before hand were completely taken up with prep for camping. Anyway, the weather on the first week was not conducive to working on scrolls. It rained a lot and everything was moist. Moisture is something I have dealt with while finishing scrolls at Pennsic before and I thought I would be ok this time too. Luckily I had thought ahead enough to chose a style of scroll which is not too intense time-wise. I finally got a couple dry days, and I worked as long as I could on those two days. When I finished up the painting and started the outline, I discovered my pen had dried up. I have been using a shortcut to do the outlining and use a micron pen instead of a crow quill with ink. So here I was in Western Penn. with no idea about where an art store or at least craft store might be. I taught for the first time at this Pennsic also, and on the last day I asked if anyone knew where a store might be. I was so happy when one of the ladies said she had a pen which she had brought along in case she wanted to learn scribal work, and was willing to give it to me. Yay, I would really like to thank her. It was the exact same kind of pen I usually use. Then all that was left was the calligraphy. I almost always do the words last. I know it is not necessarily the best way, but it is my least favorite part and I tend to put it off. I had forgotten to bring any ink along, but my apprentice sister had some she could lend me. Just as I was finishing the wording, I spilled the ink. It went all over the place; my gown, the table, the scribal box, the chest I was sitting on.....none on the scroll, not even one little spot. I could not believe it. Two of my fingernails are still discolored. Anyway that finished it up so I did not have to worry about it anymore. I would love to show a picture, but I forgot to do that also. This is scroll number 23 for the A&S 50 challenge. I am almost half way there. Hopefully, this will be one of the worst in regards to poor planning.

Pelican Scroll

2009-07-01T05:39:00.000-07:00

It has been quite a while since I last wrote anything in my blog. The Barony of Smoking Rocks holds its largest event in June, Vinland Raids. This year it was especially difficult since it also hosted the King and Queen's Archery Championships. I spent quite a bit of time making targets and setting up the tournament. On top of that I got a tick bite from which I got both Lyme disease and Babesiosis. I have been spending the last couple weeks recovering from both of those and the side effects of the antibiotics I was on. Anyway, now all of that is over and I can get back to working on projects.

Back at the beginning of June I had a scroll due. I showed the very beginning of it back in May. It was the first peerage scroll I was assigned and I especially wanted to do a good job on it. This picture shows the scroll when it was about half done. At this point I hadn't even decided what was going to go into the final medallions. In the end there were 2 medallions which I did not really like. The ones which hold the archery equipment. The way the red paint convered the yellow did not work out the way I wanted it to. It ended up looking a little clumpy and crude. All together, though, I am happy with the way it turned out.

The scroll was based on The Grandes Heures of Jean Duke of Berry. Unfortunately it is very hard to see the fine details on this picture. This is scroll # 22 for the A&S challenge.

2009-05-07T14:16:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess it is not going to be quite that easy to get started on the gloves. typically I found I need a few other thing before I can get going. I did find some beautiful pictures of flowers in Mira calligraphiae. The book I am using is still under copyright so I cannot post pictures here unfortunately. Here is a link to the book I used which shows a couple of pictures of flowers, but not any of the ones I am planning on using. http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=1756&handle=book&pg=1

The ones I chose are a tulip, iris, violet, lilly and columbine. I do want to check on the symbolism behind the various types of flowers before I make my final decisions.

Then I looked into my fabric stash to see if I could find some nice satin, preferably silk. Ha! Just as I was writing that I suddenly remembered I had stashed a bunch of silk remnants in a drawer in my bedroom. I just found the perfect piece: a beautiful white silk satin just the right size. that is one hurdle over.

I did have to go to the store and pick up a new embroidery frame. I already have two, but of course they already have a partly finished project on them. Now I have one just for the gloves. I also have enough white linen for the interlining. Next I need to figure out the size of the cuffs and mount the fabrics on the frame.

I am very excited. I just ordered a new book from Australia on early bobbin lace. http://www.lacedaisypress.com.au/publication1.html I have her beginners book on bobbinlace which I think is one of the best for complete, but not intense instructions. The picture on the cover of the new book shows some great examples. According to the blurb, there are 30 patterns in it. that is a huge number. Up until now, I have only been able to find maybe 10 reprductions of pre-seventeenth century pieces. If I cannot find a lace pattern in here for the outside edge of the gloves, I will have to start working on one of my own interpretations.

In the mean time I am working on my first peerage scroll. It is a Pelican, the society's highest award for service. I asked my apprentice sister to do the calligraphy for me. When I picked it up last weekend with the words written in, I was greatly impressed. Eva is really very good at doing the Gothic hand. Eventhough she did feel obliged to point out her worst word. Even her worst word was better than all mine. Well anyway, for my part I have just started putting the gold in. Luckily I have 6 weeks to finish this scroll, it is going to take a long time. This is as far as I have gotten so far. The calligraphy is covered to protect it, and keep the recipient a secret for now. As you can see, I am not very far along yet.

2009-04-25T13:58:00.000-07:00

I have decided I want to use this blog in a slightly different manner than I have been doing. I want to follow some of the projects from their conception to their completion. Eventhough, it may take years for some of them.

I am going to start with a pair of gloves. There are quite a few pairs of 16th and 17th century gloves on the worshipful glove makers website. http://www.glovecollectioncatalogue.org/ I have been especially smitten by accession number 23345 (to see a picture of the specific pair of gloves click on the "Spence Collection at Bath 23337-23361, then scroll down to number 23345). They have everything I have been looking for. I wanted to do a fairly small project with gold embroidery. The metal work on these gloves are all styles I know how to do. The small bobbinlace edging should be an easy-ish pattern to duplicate. In addition, the embroidered flowers are gorgeous. I really like to more realistic look of these. They remind me of the flowers pictured in Mira Calligraphae. I even get to try making a stumwork tree. Another motif I have been wanting to try.

According to the glove makers website, the lower part of the gloves are leather and the decorated part is satin. The first part will be to find some satin in my fabric collection and start designing the patterns. I am not going to worry about how to make the actual glove part yet. I do not think I have any apropriate leather at the moment so that will have to wait a while.

I have completed one more scroll for the challenge. This is scroll number 21. That means 29 left to complete my challenge. I still have many years so it is looking good for completion of this part of my challenge.

I am also starting my first peerage scroll. It is off getting the calligraphy done right now. I usually do my own calligraphy, but I am the first to admit I am not great at it. My apprentice sister Eva, on the other hand, is much better than I. Therefore she is helping me out on this one. The scroll is based on the Grande Heures of Jean Duke of Berry. I sketched out the pattern before I gave it to her so she knows where to put the calligraphy.

2009-03-01T05:44:00.000-08:00

The table runner is finally finished. I don't think I will include another picture of it. I have certainly posted enough. Anyway the most recent photos were only missing one row of lace so they are pretty close. So now I am at the enviable spot of being able to start a new project. I think starting new projects is my favorite part. I did a small trial piece of lace from the book by Brigitte Bellon " Gekloppelte Reticella". This is one of my favorite books for bobbinlace patterns. I think she has a nice collection of patterns that look very similar to picture of existent pieces from Italy in the 16th C. This is the 19th piece of lace I have made for the 50 challenge.

In the scroll category, I just finished a grant of arms based on the Codex Purpureus scrolls. The person getting the scroll has a Roman personna, so I was trying to get something that would have been appropriate for her period and era. It is a fairly simplistic type of scroll and I was a little leary about making it for an award as high level as a grant , but in the end I really wanted to stay closer to her personna than make something flashy and inappropriate. I also wrestled with the idea of leaving the scroll with the original greek letters or move to the roman letters which is closer to her personna. In the end I stayed with the Greek letters that were on the original scroll. The Midrealm Dragon in the picture is actually green, but the picture does not show that very well.

I have chosen the next big project for lace making. The new Janet Arnold book "Patterns of Fashion 4" has 2 smocks on page 60. One of them has inserts of bobbinlace in a chevron pattern, adn the other is made of recycled cutwork. I am going to try making a chemise with bobbinlace insert. I think I will try making the chemise pattern from the cutwork chemise though. The chevron pattern is a little more difficult, and I would rather start with the slightly easier piece. For a lacemaker that book is absolutely gorgeous. We usually have to make do with photos of portraits. This book shows real closeups of the lace itself. I am looking forward to trying to workout the patterns of a some of them myself instead of depending of someone else's version of the pricking. I am almost far enough along with bobbinlace to be comfortable enough with the techniques to try making up my own patterns for the pictured pieces.

2009-02-01T07:29:00.000-08:00

I have been waiting patiently to post again. I have a group of scrolls that just got finished, but I had to wait for them to be given out before I could post about them. The first 2 were both given out at Kingdom 12th night. The Grand master bowman on the left was a back-log scroll which should have origianally gone out a couple years ago. I was actually very lazy about this one. I was given the assignment months before I even started it. The second one on the right is a Sagitarius (the order of high merit for archery in the East Kingdom). These 2 were numbers 17 and 18 for the challenge.

Then 2 weeks later at Birka the AOA I made for Alys went out. this piece was #19. I am making a good dent in the 50 scrolls I want to get done. I however, am not too happy with some aspects of these latest scrolls. I just don't seem to be getting any better at the Gothic script. I especially enjoy the later period scrolls, so I really need to get better at it. Ygraine told me there were exercises I could use to make it better. I am going to have to get back to her about that. The other part is the shading. Sometimes it works very well, and other time not so much. I would like to get a little more consistent with it, but I think that is a case of more practice.

I have also gotten a couple more piece of lace finished. There is only one more piece to finish the table runner now. It has now gotten long enough that I have to either hang it on a door, or clean off my project table to get a picture of it. you will notice it is on the door. I am beginning to look forward to finishing this project. I have so many other things in mind that I want to make.

2008-12-21T14:10:00.000-08:00

I have not posted in quite a while. I have been busy working on the table runner, smock, and scrolls.

First the table runner. I have finished the unicorn and 2 of the bobbinlace dividers. I am putting the runner together with spacers of linen with hemstitched edges.

As you can see, I am still missing a couple of the elements. The bobbinlace piece on the right is not attached yet, and the one for the other side is not finished. As a matter of fact it is barely begun.
I have about 1/2 a repeat done so far. The finished ones are 8 repeats long. I should be done fairly soon after the new year. I get a fair amount of time off at this time of year.

The spacers of linen are hemmed and attached to the edges of the lace pieces. Just a little bit of hemstitching keeps the lacy touch I am trying for. I have not decided whether I am going to do some whitework in the linen spacers. I may keep that part of the project for another day.

The Lacis piece was #7 in my A&S 50 challenge, and the 2nd bobbinlace insert is #16. There was quite a while between the start and finish of that lacis piece.

The smock has been moving along very slowly. More because I keep moving it to the back burner, than because it is difficult. The smocking was mostly finished back in August. I took it to a smocking round table discussion at Pennsic. The best piece of advice I got was to add a couple more lines to the smocking. After I had done that I think it has a smoother more finished look. In the picture you can see the stabilization band that I put on the back.

The ruffle is just hemmed. One of these days I would love to make another smock with bobbinlace around the neck, and a couple of inserts of lace. It is on the "list". I chose not to gather the ends of the sleeves to approximate the looser style. I have the fabric to make an Italian gown to go over it. I have decided I would like to finish it for Birka which is at the end of Jan. That gives me about 1 month to make it. We will see if that is too ambitious.

I have only finished one scroll since the last time I updated this blog, and unfortunately I do not seem to have made a scan of the finished piece. I really have a memory of doing it, but can't find it in the computer anywhere. Oh well, anyway it was a persian style AOA which would make it #16 for the challenge. At least I get an oportunitty to make up for my mistake. I have 3 scrolls due in the next month that I will try really hard to make scans or copies of.

another scroll and lace update

2008-10-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

I have been working along on the A&S 50 challenge. As I go I seem to be starting more and more complex projects. I have decided the latest lace project is going to be a table runner with 2 lacis panels and 3 lines of bobbinlace surrounding them.

The first strip of bobbinlace is finished. The bobbinlace I am using is a repicated pattern from a 16th C Piece in "Onder de Leop" by Nora Andries. It looks quite a bit like a connecting piece used in an Italian lace piece in "Old Italian Lace" from the 17th C. It uses 40 bobbins and 60/2 linen thread. This is the first piece I have made from that book. This was the 15 piece of lace for the challenge.

To go with the bobbinlace I finished the first piece of the lacis. I posted a picture of it when it was partially done before. The lion is now done and the accompanying unicorn is started. At the moment the unicorn is kind of creepy. It looks like a unicorn torso, but it is going quickly and will pick up a head and feet pretty quick. In the meantime it is appropriate for the All-Hallowed Evening holiday coming up later this month. Because of a long delay between the start of the lion and the start of the unicorn they are numbers 7 and 16 respectively.

On the other hand I finished another scroll. This one is a silver cresent done in the Persian style. The recipient has a Persian personna in the SCA (http://www.sca.org/) so the style was especially appropriate. I really like making scrolls in the Persian style eventhough I consider them to be difficult. Some of the pieces from the Safavid period are almost unbelievably beautiful. With dragons appearing from around trees, and extraordinarily complex patterns on the buildings and tents of the people, they are gorgeous. I have not attempted to make one that is close to the more complex patterns. I think it could take months of continual and hard work. For now I chose to replicate a picture of a tree which dissappears behind the script box. This was the 15th scroll out of the 50 I want to complete for the challenge.

Lots of bobbinlace

2008-08-28T15:32:00.001-07:00

Well it has been a while since I last posted. July was busy with preparations for Pennsic (the SCA camping event in Western Pennsylvania, http://www.pennsicwar.org/). I was setting up a camp for our Barony for the first time this year. It was both the first time our Barony had its own camp, and the first time I had ever done landgrab. It was an interesting experience. I am looking forward to doing it again next year....but anyway. It makes for a busy July and August.

While at Pennsic I had a chance to talk to a lacemaker about how I was doing with my pieces. She recommended that I try doing the set of exercises from Cook's book "The torchon Lace Workbook". In my usual all or nothing style, I immediately came home and did the first 7 lessons. Therefore I have 9 new pieces of lace for the 50 challenge. The picture shows 8 pieces from the series of lessons. I will admit I ran through the earlier ones pretty quickly and did not even bother to finish them. The full length multicolored one were slightly more advanced and therefore fun so I finished them up. The other piece I have started is from "Onder de Loep". The third piece in that book. I plan on putting it between the lacis pieces on a table runner. the lion I started will be one of the three panels.

Black scrolls

2008-07-02T17:04:00.000-07:00

Well it is about time I had something to write about. Last weekend I went to the King and Queen's Archery Championships here in the East Kingdom. I had been asked to make scrolls for the winners. I decided to make a couple of scrolls which were based on the Mira calligraphae. I am fairly happy with the way they came out. Interestingly, I ended up giving the scroll on the right, the one for the Queen's champion to my own son. He won the competition. I was not expecially expecting that. This was the 13th and 14th scroll for the 50 challenge. I have another one which I just finished which I can post after this weekend when it is given out.

I also started a filet lace project in the shape of a lion. I did a fair amount of travelling last month and found that I could do it in a moving vehicle. It fills three separate roles for me. It is the 6th piece of lace for my 50 challenge. I have been working towards completing all the categories of embroidery in the Athena's Thimble, and lacis is one of the last categories I have left. I included the close up so you can see the cloth stitch I am using to fill in the pattern. Finally, I have taken it into my head to try each form of lace which can be traced back to pre-17th century. So far I have made a piece of Reticella, Filet lace, bobbin lace, and teneriffe. So many still to try.

Barony members flags

2008-05-09T04:42:00.000-07:00

Since I am using this blog to detail my experiences with the A&S 50 challenge, I should write about the flags people have been making. One of my challenges is to make 50 pieces of "dress up" for our Baronial camps. We have only been a Barony of the East Kingdom for about 5 years. When we bacame a Barony we slightly changes our device. Therefore we dis not have any heraldic flags to represent ourselves. Now I could not see making 50 pieces with heraldry just for the Barony, so I asked people if they wanted to make personal flags to decorate the camp also. This was we end up with lots of flutterys, and a little more bling. Toward this end we have been making silk flags with our own heraldry on them (or any pattern for that matter).

Here are some of the flags which have been made so far. I am using a resist method for them. Most of the materials have come from dharma Trading Post at: http://www.dharmatrading.com/

We are using 44" square silk handkerchiefs with hand rolled hems, Jacquard silk colors with the green label and Pebeo gutta in black. I like this resist because it does not have to be removed and it leaves a fine black outline around the patterns. I was originally worried about it adding some weight to the fabric which would limit the flutteriness (is that a word?), but it does not seem to be a problem. When the gutta dries it adds very little to the fabric. It may be an issue if you had a piece with a huge amount of outlining, but no one has had any issues with it yet. There is a rinse step at the end which uses a fair amount of water. We have been hanging them up and spraying them down with the hose. Now that it is getting warmer again, we can start working on them again. So far 23 have been made. The target , of course, is 50 and we are already about half way there.

Mine is the blue and yellow flag with a single arrow in the first picture. I am lucky to have a large backyard where I can do this sort of thing.

Finished First Handkerchief

2008-05-06T05:28:00.000-07:00

I finally finished the my first handkerchief. The insert is a fairly simple reticella pattern, with a bobbin lace border. The lace is plaited from a pattern in "Gekloppelte Reticella" by Brigitte Bellon. I am not totally happy with the tension of the plait, but this was my first time trying it. I am also not completely happy with the pattern of the reticella in the insert. Somehow it looks unsymetrical to me though it isn't. Those are my main issues with this piece. It gives me something to try to fix in the next one. At the moment I do not have another handkerchief in mind, but I have started a lace cap. I do plan on doing some more lace handkerchiefs for the A&S 50 challenge.

In other news, I went to an Athena's Thimble collegium last weekend. I took a class on pulled thread work. It was exactly what I needed to start looking at a project I have had on the back burner for a while. It is a Ottoman scarf with designs on the ends. The designs have elements of pulled thread which I was not sure how to make. Now I have a better idea, and I have started charting the pattern. It really is not too difficult a piece. It has satin stitch, double running stitch, pattern darning, pulled thread, and some fairly simple reticella. While all these are fairly easy by themselves, the tricky part will be getting them all to work together. Anyway I am excited about it.

Here is a sample of the pulled thread that I did in the class.

I think this pattern will be just about right for the scarf.

The only other thing I am working on diligently at the moment are some scrolls for the king and Queen's archery champions event. I decided to do black scrolls this time. It is the first time I have tried then, but I think they are coming out fine. They may not be especially powerful from a distance, but up close they will be nice.

metal lace

2008-04-13T11:45:00.000-07:00

I finished the piece of metal thread bobbin lace to send to Plimoth Plantation. They have a project underway to replicate a 17th C English jacket. The original is at the Victoria and Albert Museum in england.

They have done some wonderful work getting the correct type of thread for the embroidery and lace. Here is link to their blog: http://www.plimoth.org/embroidery-blog/

Anyway, I spent a couple weekends helping do embroidery on the jacket, and now I wanted to make a practice lace piece to send to them. I have not really decided if I feel secure enough making lace to try and help on the actual jacket. I am fairly new to the bobbin lace craft.

II also got another Scroll done for my 50 challenge. Unfortunately I did not get a copy or picture of the finished product. That is unusual for me. I am usually really good at documenting my work. I do have some pics of the unfinished piece though. The person who was getting it owns an African Grey Parrot so I was looking for an image of a manuscript page with a parrot in it that I could alter.

Here is a picture of the whole thing, and another close up of the initial with the white work filled in. You can't see the parrot in the picture of the whole thing because he is not in there yet. The 2 parrots were the last thing I did on the scroll. This is the 12th Scroll I have completed towards my goal of 5o by the society's 50th anniversary.

Blackwork Partlet

2008-03-20T03:03:00.000-07:00

One of the earlier projects I did was a blackwork partlet. The Partlet is a small piece of clothing much like a modern dickie made to be worn over the shoulders and chest underneath a low cut gown. I made mine to go under an Elizabethan gown. Here is a picture of me wearing it. It is not a great picture of the partlet, but you can see how it should be worn. The pattern on this piece is from the Italian sampler made in the late 1500s. The pattern was originally posted online, I believe, on Bronwen's blackwork library. This site no longer exists. I have heard she took it down to publish the patterns, but at the time it was a viable source for the pattern. Nowaday I always create my own patterns. It is not difficult to take a piece of graph paper and play around with it until you get a pattern that is similar to the one you are trying to recreate.

Here is a close up of the partlet by itself. I chose to make the blackwork pattern only lining the front opening and collar. When blackwork first started appearing on partlets in the mid 1500s the geometric patterns often outlined only these areas. For an example see:

http://www.elizabethan-portraits.com/UnknownChild7.jpg

Here is a close up of the pattern. It does look a lot like the pattern I used to make the blackwork hood which I wrote about a couple days ago. I like that Italian sampler as a source of patterns. It is currently housed at the Victoria and Albert museum, but unfortunately does not appear to have a picture up at the moment.

I chose to execute the pattern in backstitch because I was not expecially comfortable with double running (Holbein) stitch at that time. Also the back of the pattern was not going to be visible. There is some indication that backstitch was commonly used for blackwork where the back would not be visible. However, at this point I have no proof of this, having never been priviledged to see the back of any pieces. The fabric is an evenweave linen, and the pattern for making the partlet came from one of Margo's patterns.

Quilted wine bag

2008-03-11T19:17:00.000-07:00

Not only do I want this blog to be a journal of my progress in the A&S 50 challenge, but I also want to keep track here of the other projects I am involved in. Recently I was volunteered to be part of a project to give other kingdoms in the SCA gifts from The East Kingdom. We made wine bags with the heraldry of the recipient kingdom on them.
I chose to do my design in padded work, or in this case quilting. I saw a series of pictures on line from the Victoria and Albert museum showing a quilted Sicilian bedspread from around 1400.

The pattern on that was The story of Tristan. The quilting was done on a plain colored background with colored thread outlining the figures. The background is then filled in with plain white thread random stitching. The stitching is not really all that random. It mainly appears to be in lines. http://www.flickr.com/photos/medievalandrenaissance/
This was my first attempt to quilt something like this, and I was fairly happy with the way it came out.
I am also working towards getting a competency ranking in all the categories in the Athena's Thimble, the embroidery guild for the East Kingdom. They have 12 categories for embroidery. At the time I took on the Wine bag project, I was missing a padded work piece. Therefore, I chose this style to both finish the project in an unusual manner and finish a piece for the Thimble. I would eventually like to make period competency in all the categories, but for now I just have to finish one piece in them all. http://www.athenasthimble.com/
At this point I only have to finish a pleated work, and a lacis piece. I have been having so much fun doing all the different kinds of embroidery. I am really excited by finding Athena's Thimble, and getting to participate. The handkerchief I posted a couple days ago qualified for drawn-work, and needle lace. I may post some pictures of some of the earlier projects which qualified for other categories assuming I still have the items.

A couple of Scrolls

2008-03-10T15:46:00.001-07:00

I thought I would put up pictures of a few more of the scrolls I have finished for the A&S 50 challenge, not to mention my Kingdom. As I look over the scrolls, I see that I have been leaning towards making bar and ivy styles. I really do like them. All the little grotesques in the borders can be a lot of fun to make, and they are easy to personalize to the scrolls recipient.

The first one was a grand master bowman. I added a couple of small archers on the bottom border to highlight his accomplishments. The second one was a silver cresent. The East Kingdom's service award. I did not know that much about the recipient of that scroll, but the fire dragon and the ice dragon holding the award on the bottom works for almost any person. I am almost sorry I cannot keep using them. However, I don't like to repeat scrolls. I did it once, and somehow feel I failed the second recipient. It was one of my favorite patterns with little dragons all around the edge.

2008-03-07T04:22:00.000-08:00

My projects for the A&S 50 challenge include: making 50 pieces of lace; making 50 scrolls and making 50 pieces of regalia with the members of my barony. Up to this date I have completed 11 of the scrolls. This includes 5 scrolls for our Baronial Challenge to the other Baronies to support the purchase of coursing equipment for the Kingdom. I usually have a color copy made of the scrolls I make, and don't take pictures of them. I happened to take a picture of this set so I can post it.

I am also doing some bobbin lace for the challenge. Only the second pattern down in the picture on the left is actually for the challenge. The other 3 I finished before the challenge began. The 2 on the bottom are now on the blackwork hood .

The picture on the right shows a short stretch of the baby bonnet edging from the pattern in "Elizabethan Lace" by Gillian Dye. The piece on top of that picture is a very short practice piece of a handkerchief edging from "Gekloppelte Reticella" by Brigitte Bellon. I am making a much bigger piece of the edging to go around a handkerchief I made with a small reticella panel.

The reticella is only partly done in this picture. Since then I have finished it, and the handkerchief is just waiting for me to finish the edging to get done. I am really glad to say I am just about 1/2 done with that edging now. It really takes quite a while to do a long piece. This was also my first try at going around a corner.

At this point I have made 4 pieces of lace for the challenge. I have to say so far the lace is my favorite part. I did not expect to enjoy making lace this much. It is after all a bit fussy. However, being able to turn out something which is this delicate and downright pretty really makes me happy. That after all is the real reason to follow the challenge. To do stuff which makes you happy. Well I guess that is enough for today. After I catch up on what I have finished it will not be quite so bad keeping this updated.

Blackwork Hood

2008-03-05T17:07:00.000-08:00

This is a project I have been working on for quite a while. It has taken my a couple years to finish the blackwork. The pattern around the front edge is my version of one of the patterns from a 16th century Italian sampler. It is done with backstitching. I used a smaller motif to cover the back because I wanted to do it in double running stitch, and I did not trust myself to do too complicated a pattern at first.

A close up of the front edge shows both the more complex pattern and the bobbin lace which I edged it with. Of course the only references I have for the blackwork hood say it was a little used fashion which was mainly worn by little old ladies, and indeed I have never seen a picture with someone wearing one. There are 2 examples of this kind of hood in the Victoria and Albert museum, which is where I got the idea.

So what would I do differently if I were to do this again? I would definately do the blackwork with silk thread, and the bobbin lace with linen. At that time I had only used cheap cotton thread for the bobbin lace because I was just starting, and I didn't want to waste the expensive linen. I have since done some linen bobbinlace, and I am amazed at how much better it handles. The linen has a crisp nature that makes the lace stand out better.

Thus ends the first installment of A&S projects.

First Day of Blog

2008-03-05T12:18:00.000-08:00

So this is it. My first blog entry. I am planning on using this page to keep a record of the Arts and Sciences projects I am doing for the A&S 50 challenge. I decided it was time I keep some sort of record other than on my own computer. The whole idea behind the challenge is to share ideas and kowledge. I can hardly do that if I am sitting on them.

Anyway, as soon as I get home I will post some pictures of some of the projects I have completed so far. I will also post some pictures of projects which are not at all connected with the challenge.