Brick Stitch Pouch for Marian

 This project is a gift for a dear friend in the SCA, Mistress Marian of Rokesburg, who was recently elevated to the Order of the Mark in Ealdormere. I wanted to make her something special and settled on something in German brick stitch. I checked out her heraldry.

The deer would have been very difficult to do in brick stitch, but the dragonflies had promise. So I started playing around, sketching things on graph paper and in excel. I first tried a pattern in which all of the brick stitches are the same length.

It turned out fine, but I wanted something more. Marian and her husband Kolbjorn have been so supportive of me with my A&S journey, I wanted something special. So I came up with this.

I was really happy with how this turned out, so I went forward with it. As the time for her elevation got closer and closer, I knew I wasn't going to get it done. I considered just do the embroidery for one side, but when it became clear that I wouldn't get that done either, I resolved to make sure both sides were embroidered. It will get done! But I was able to present her with a copy of the pattern and show her the work in progress.

An applique project

 Hello again, yep, it's been a while. I know, I know, I should better at keeping up with this. I am working on things, just keep forgetting to post.

Let's look at this project. A Pennsic or two ago, I attended a class on doing applique edged with gilded leather. Similar, to the intarsia that I have already posted about, but this is a surface applique. Like I ended up doing with the archery bags. I enjoyed the class, but a couple of years later when I finally got back to it, I wasn't as thrilled with the technique of edging the applique with thin leather that was then to be painted. Just didn't look quite right for me. So I decided that it was a good opportunity to do some gold couching around the motifs instead. Love how it is turning out. Not sure what it will end up being. I took a class on how to make ring pouches so these might go on there. We'll see!

So we've got just a basic cotton fabric back. I think you use most anything for it. There is also a tighter woven white muslin behind as a stabilizer. The applique motifs are wool felt. This is great for using up little scraps. I just sewed each piece down with matching thread so it blends in. You'll want to get these edges are small as you can, but not so small that they tear out easily. This is decorative not structural.

Here you can see the two pieces, the white stabilizer behind. We have the main yellow central motif and some green fleur-de-lis. Later I add in some blue bits also.

Here I am beginning couching the gold around the fleur-de-lis. Went with two strands. Sorry, I do not remember where I got this. I think at some point several years ago, a company was going out of business and I got a bunch of big spools on sale.

Two fleurs done!

Here I've added the blue chevrons and begun couching around them and getting the center motif going.

A picture of my stand. Doing this sort of couching work, you really need to have both hands, one to manipulate the couching threads and the other to do the sewing.

This project is on hold for a while. Have a couple of other projects that got bumped up ahead of it, but I love how it is turning out, so it'll definitely not be forgotten.

Intarsia no more Bag Project

 So, remember the Intarsia bags I was making as prizes for an archery shoot? Yeah, about that. The blue wool was crappy. It shredded. The whole thing tore out like perforated paper. Don't really know why. Maybe it was a mix of fibers not 100% wool. Who knows. But onward and upward.

Now they are just plain applique bags. Good old surface applique edge with gilded leather is also a period technique so there we go. Just frustrating that I lost so much time messing about with the other. Got a lot done on them at Lilies War. They are for an event Fourth of July weekend. Hopefully I'll get them done. Will add some more recent progress pics soon.

German Brick Stitch patterns

 One of the things I love doing with German Brick Stitch is making up my own patterns. It lends itself well to heraldry but some things can be easier to do in "pixel art" than others. For a while now I've been working on some patterns for Mistress Zuriel incorporating her personal heraldry, her household Darkyard, and her peerages of the Pelican and Laurel.

A month or so ago, I finally finished! Really happy with the results and she is too. So we have her skull, the Darkyard tree, a laurel wreath, and the pelican's blood droplets, because, dang, trying to work out a pelican in her piety in brick stitch would have been super hard.

Silk Ribbon Hem Finishing

 A friend from Calontir was posting about using silk ribbon as an inside hem finishing technique, something she had learned about from another Calontir friend. I had also seen a similar technique on a video on Norse garb... I wish I could remember which one. It was probably Wyrd Kindred (https://www.youtube.com/@WyrdKindred), but not sure. I decided to give it a try on this orange jacket of mine because the fabric is pretty thick and the hems even more so. After a bit of futzing to figure out how best to do this and hold everything in place while I stitch, I ended up using clips and am pretty happy with how it has turned out.

Intarsia Applique Archery Bags - Starting

 One of the other activities I do in the SCA is archery. I'm ok at it. I don't have any awards or anything in it, and I really enjoy doing the Unranked Archer shoot at Lilies War. I've been complaining about how we need to do more of these so, I guess I'll do it. My barony has an event every year around the Fourth of July called Simple Day, so I am sponsoring an Unranked Archery shoot at it.

I'm providing the prizes for it and am making archery bags. These will be bags for stashing all the stuff we carry around, strings, wax, extra parts, whatever, and I am using the intarsia applique technique for them. They will be about 10" by 13", the outside will be wool, lined with linen or a linen-cotton blend I have in my stash, and have a long strap for slinging over one's shoulders. I also want to use this as a possible learning and practice opportunity for our Tuesday night socials if people want to try their hand at it and help put them together. There will be three: one for handbow, one for crossbow, and one for period bow.

I am making one for myself to test this all out and have already run into some lessons for when we do this for real.

I printed out the pattern and started cutting. I used tape instead of pins to minimize the rippling in the fabric since you want each piece to match up as well as possible with the opposite hole. That worked great. What didn't work great was that I cut out both layers of fabric at the same time. Don't do this. You think it's going to work fine. You've got sharp, pointy scissors. Nope. Don't do it. They just didn't match up well when I switched them at all.

I went on and based each one into the other fabric. I could tell that there were going to be gaps in some places and overlap. With this technique, you can even some of that out as you sew and squish and stretch the fabric about, but the more you have, the more it just doesn't look great.

Here are the pieces with the arrows basted in with plain old poly sewing thread.

And here I have started the actual whip stitching, using linen thread.

And here this arrow is done. It isn't horrible, but I wasn't happy with it.

So... I'm going to start over. More to come!

Miscellaneous To Do List items

Haven't been working on too many embroidery projects lately. In March, I've been trying a new thing at o our Tuesday practices/socials. Instead of a formal, one time class on embroidery stitches, I've been doing a kind of Embroiderer in Residence things. March has been outlining stitches. I'm there and available, with loaner stuff in tow, to learn and practice outline stitches. Have also had some copies from one of my embroidery stitch bibles for each stitch we cover. Have had one student, but she seems to be enjoying it and learning from it. We'll keep on doing this. It is meant to be a small, 1-3 person thing, and meant to be the kind of thing that can be joined in on as time allows.

I've also been working on getting some things done from my To Do list.

I have had this fabric forever (probably at least 20 years) and had originally made a sort of short coat to go over tunics and cotehardies, but I was never happy with it. I dug it out of the scrap bin again and changed the sleeves from angel wings to straight, pieced on some more to the ends of the sleeves to make them longer, and made a couple of other small adjustments. Am currently finishing the seams and hems then will add strips of black fur to the edges and around the arms where I pieced in the longer bits.

I have an outfit which is the "comfort' Elizabethan from Margo Anderson's pattern that I made ages ago. It is out of cotton sportswear which has faded a bit. Pondering maybe remaking it out of linen, but not sure yet. Meanwhile, I had popped the seam on one of the arm caps a while ago before the pandemic, so I fixed that bit.

And one of the new things Mom and I are trying out is Norse garb. I had some wonderful trim that I won at an archery shoot at Lilies War and it was perfect for going around the top of my apron dress. I also did up a matching braid to go down the side seams and had enough left to trim a cap.